Star of Doom
Author: David C. Smith; Richard L. Tierney
Date: 1983-05-01 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: From the savage, sorcery-ridden lands of the Hyborian Kingdoms comes a warrior as beautiful as she is deadly. They call her Red Sonja -- for her flame-red hair, for the smouldering fire of her pride which gives her sword arm a strength that even the barbarian known as Conan cannot best. Many there are who have sought to bring her down -- with steel, with treachery, with the arts of black magic. But now she faces an enemy armed with the most dangerous weapon of them all ... love.
Publisher: Ace

The Sun Fell.

The villagers shrieked and ran, falling against each other in their panic. Bo-ugan, his headmen and the bulk of his warriors escaped, but the blazing crystals fell upon the. villagers and burned them— set them afire instantly. They screamed for but a moment, then their shrieks were drowned out by the fearsome snapping and hissing of flesh being consumed in flame.

A flame that did not die out in the wind…

The Red Sonja Series by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney

RED SONJA #1: THE RING OF IKRIBU

RED SONJA #2: DEMON LIGHT

RED SONJA #3: WHEN HELL LAUGHS

RED SONJA #4: ENDITHOR’S DAUGHTER

RED SONJA #5: AGAINST THE PRINCE OF HELL

RED SONJA #6: STAR OF DOOM

DAVID C SMITH &. RICHARD L TIERNEY

NEW YORK

RED SONJA #6 - STAR OF DOOM

An Ace Fantasy Book I published by arrangement with

the Estate of Robert E. Howard

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace edition I May 1983

Second printing I December 1983

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1983 by Glenn Lord

Cover art by Boris Vallejo

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,  by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0441-71166-9

Ace fantasy Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

“Know also, O prince, that in those selfsame days that Conan the Cimmerian did stalk the Hyborian kingdoms, one of the few swords worthy to cross with his was that of Red Sonja, warrior-woman out of majestic Hyrkania. Forced to flee her homeland because she spumed the advances of a king and slew him instead, she rode west across the Turanian Steppes and into the shadowed mists of legendry.”

—The Nemedian Chronicles

Contents :-

Prologue

PARTI The Journey

Chapter 1 The People of the Ziggurat

Chapter 2 Swords Against Evil

Chapter 3 Dark Roots

Chapter 4 The Swamp of Souls

Chapter 5 The Sorcerer’s Son

Chapter 6 Crosscurrents

Chapter 7 A Pact

PART II The Return

Chapter 8 Swords

Chapter 9 The Battle for the Ziggurat

Chapter 10 Death in the Ziggurat

Chapter 11 Thotas

Chapter 12 Remembrance and Revenge

Prologue

East of Brythunia the steppe appears to stretch away to the ends of the world, the wild plains of grass and scrub broken only by occasional knots of woodland, rolling hills and the, brisk rivers. In the summer, these steppelands once thundered to the sound of nomads and marauders, and what fanning could be accomplished was done by small villages of hard men and strong women. Far from the cities, they faced nature and the gods squarely. When doom befell them, they took it as a matter of nature’s course; if good prevailed, they remembered always the truth of an old aphorism, “Good luck comes with bad.” In the harsh winters they ate what they had stored in the summer, and endured the blizzards; in the spring, they faced torrential rains that sometimes caused the thin rivers to swell into floods, wiping away whole tribes. The people of the steppe survived.

The gods were high up and far away, and men not as strong as themselves lived in cities to the west and farther to the east, swarming there like insects upon animal corpses—or so the steppe folk contemptuously viewed them.

In the midst of the steppe, south of a small river that separated it from a few sm^ll villages, sat a huge ancient ziggurat surmounted by a temple. It was nestled into the side of a low mountain, one of the last mountains of the low ranges that stretched that far east. The inhabitants of the ziggurat had naught to do with any of the villages 1 around them, and the villagers likewise never ventured near the ziggurat. The structure, it was supposed, was a retreat for those who hated both the life of the cities and the simple communal life of the farms and the wandering tribes.

At night the lights of the pyramid-temple spread their distant glow upon the waving brown grasses and slim, dark trees of the steppe. The people of the villages, eating their suppers, turned their backs to the ziggurat and passed the evenings under their oil lamps. The temple was so old that none knew who had built it or when— though there was a whispered legend that it had been reared by sorcery in one night several centuries ago. The villages had also been there for as long as anyone could tell, the inhabitants farming the land, raising cattle and irrigating small plots of land from the rivers. It had always been thus, and ever would be.

Except that good luck always brings bad.

That year, the farmers of the villages had enjoyed their finest crops in a generation, rainfall had been plentiful, marauders few and their harvest bountiful. They were pleased, and they thanked their gods.

That summer, the star fell from the night sky.

When the star fell it caused a light so bright that the people of the villages feared it was the end of the world. Then a terrible series of concussions sounded in the night sky.

They stood at the doors and walls of their huts, mothers protecting children in their arms, staring at the exploding heavens. The brilliant light of the falling star pained their eyes. So bright and loud, it lit the entire steppe from horizon to horizon. The ziggurat erected against the mountainside was thrown into vivid relief by the prolonged explosions of light that blossomed and spread and grew for several long heartbeats. Women shuddered; men whispered in fear and awe; children began to cry. The animals of the village all went lunatic, file cows lowing and stomping, the dogs scampering in all directions, and howling with fear.

Then the flight of the falling star sent huge winds across the landscape, so that the Arm huts trembled and the thatching was thrown free. The water of the river was blown up against them in a spray.

As the cascade of light ebbed, the star struck the earth high upon the mountain above the ziggurat. The impact sent more concussions across the steppe, and more wind. The glow died instantly, but a huge flare of flame-lit smoke reached up to the stars, a column of fire that fell away too after a time.

All night, in the returned darkness, the villagers kept vigil outside their huts, watching the mountain, watching the sky. Would the star shine again? Would more fall? What did it mean? Were the gods angry? Was this the end of the world?

Towards dawn, Bo-ugan, the headman of the largest village, whispered in a raspy voice that conveyed fear and anger: “The ziggurat! The madmen in the ziggurat have called forth an evil and mean to destroy the world!”

In the middle of the night, as the concussion of that falling star ebbed away, Thotas, master of the Order of the Crimson Sun, watched the mountain from his room high in the ziggurat, and wondered. Then he ordered a gathering of all his elder priests in a spacious holy chamber whose walls were lined with the images of dark gods. Few had much to say, so shaken were they. In the very room where they sat mortar had been loosened from between the ancient stone blocks, incense braziers had been knocked over and tiles had been shaken from the floors—all from the force of that star striking the earth. Only Thotas showed no fear, and his followers detected an intense, almost mad glitter in his eyes.

“It is the time at last,” he said, standing tall in his sorcerer’s robes, his bald skull gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. His voice was deep, powerful.

“You mean—the Coming?” ventured a blue-robed acolyte.

“The thing is accomplished!” cried Thotas, raising his arms aloft and gazing heavenward, so that his dark forked beard stuck out rigidly. Then, again facing his subordinate priests: “This night, three centuries of conjuring by ourselves and our predecessors have been answered. The dark gods have sent us the Star, and now it must be retrieved. We must search it out and secure it in the high, holy temple we have prepared for it. We must keep and guard it, and use its power—we, the priests and magicians of the world’s most holy and secret Order. The time of power is near, brethren—for, when we master the Star all mankind shall know our undisputed rule!”

The conclave soon broke up with some excited mutterings, and the elders of the temple recruited a small troop of strong young acolytes to go with Thotas in the morning to find and bring back the fallen star.

They left that morning at dawn.

That same morning, Bo-ugan called the headmen of the other four villages in the territory to his war-hut, and there they discussed the common fear of them all: the sorcerers of the ziggurat had finally called forth an evil from the skies. It would be necessary for the warriors, the farmers, the flock-herders and ail the other men of the villages to take up arms and attack the temple to defend themselves from whatever evil might soon issue from that place.

All the headmen agreed, and all drew forth their knives and thrust them into the red circles painted onto Bo-ugan’s table top. Then they dispersed, returning to their villages in the light of the rising sun to recruit warriors for the mission.

Not one had dissented. All took it for granted that there was a gathering menace that must be fought. For surely there was a growing tension in the very air, a subtle madness…

Thotas, with his retainers and young acolytes, traveled much of the day to reach the mountaintop. They had no fear of not finding the star; all around them was devastation, and the charred path of burnt and toppled trees led them on a direct, if difficult, route to the sending of the gods.

By mid-afternoon they stood on the edge of a great crater, larger than the diameter of their ziggurat. Balancing themselves on the smoldering ruins of smashed trees which rested on still hot rocks that had been touched by the fire of the heavens, they saw below them in the crater a stone—no more massive than a man, but glowing hot and sending up smoke and gas.

Even as they stood, staring at the mystery, the cloudy skies rumbled. A strong, gritty wind blew over them, and then rain fell—a drizzle, wetting their sweaty faces and steaming as it struck the hot crater and the thing within it.

Thotas, staff in hand, took a few steps down the side of the crater. He almost stumbled a few times on the ash and rubble, yet he was drawn towards the thing by an undeniable attraction, knowing as he stared keenly at it that his concentrated prayers and those of his predecessors had at last been answered…

Pausing, he turned towards the others above him. “Some of you get down there and drag it out. Use the ropes and poles we brought. Hurry! The rain will cool it down enough!”

Hesitant, uncertain whether to be more wary of the star in the crater or of the sorcerer’s wrath, two dozen young acolytes clambered down the side of the pit past Thotas, struggling with the long oak poles and heavy silk rope they had carried up the mountain.

Thotas pulled himself up over the rim once more and stood silently watching with fascination the endeavors of his young priests. His bald head gleamed with sweat as he nervously stroked his dark, forked beard; his powerful frame trembled with excitement. He whispered to a retainer standing near him: “Do you feel it? Do you feel it?”

The man stared at Thotas. “Feel what, Master?”

Thotas’s heavy-jowled face cracked into a smile; he did not look at the man but kept his gaze full upon the star in the crater. “Thepower,” he whispered, more to himself than in answer to the other’s question. “The strength of it! My answer from the gods…

In the drizzling rain of the afternoon Bo-ugan, the other four headmen and four hundred of their strongest warriors approached the ziggurat, followed by another three hundred men. Bo-ugan had deliberately divided his followers into two contingents.

They had traveled through their fields, forded the river that separated them from the environs of the ziggurat, then moved boldly forward. Now they chanted old war songs to bolster their courage as they crossed the slightly rolling fieldland north of the pyramidal structure.

“Evil things, evil things,” Bo-ugan constantly muttered to himself, stepping firmly upon the earth as he advanced, as if his heavy tread might frighten those in the ziggurat. “Evil things! They should have been wiped out in my grandfather’s day. But we will destroy them and their evil. I will kill every dog of them!”

As they approached the ziggurat, the rain fell harder, and Bo-ugan and all his men, despite their fear and anger, were awed by the size of the structure. All their lives they had seen the thing only from beyond the river; now, coming close, they saw that it was like a small mountain itself of dressed stone, or a small city. It was in shape a terraced pyramid; built upon its many levels were walls, sloping and rising around and around the structure to its topmost height, where it was crowned by a small—or what looked at that distance to be small-dwelling or temple. The thing appeared to have been built in several stages; the base was of the blackest basalt, while brown and gray and even greenish stones constituted the structure as it tapered upward.

As Bo-ugan came closer it became obvious that each of the building stones in the thing was at least as tall as himself. The ziggurat towered gigantically, casting an immense shadow upon the field. As the mountain against which it rested dwarfed the ziggurat, so did the ziggurat dwarf the army of villagers approaching it.

There was no sound of life around them—no birds, no field animals, not even a serpent or a mole making its presence known. No crops, no byways or paths, not even a trail that might suggest an occasional caravan— only the mountain, the ziggurat and all around them the wide, windswept fields of grass.

As Bo-ugan and his men came within several yards of the thing, they wondered suddenly how they plight attack or scale it. Their generation had never known siege warfare. As they came cautiously forward, wondering and murmuring aloud, one of the great base stones moved ponderously inward, revealing a dark entranceway.

Startled, Bo-ugan called his troops to a halt. He and his fellow headmen and warriors found themselves staring into the face of a pale, lean man dressed in a long blue robe. For several moments the breeze moved on the plain, but not a word was spoken. Then the silence was broken by the robed man.

“What do you want here?” he said in a quiet yet powerful voice. His hands were folded inside his robe, and his intent gaze burned into the eyes of the villagers gathered before him.

Bo-ugan, urged on by the angry mutter of the men behind him, stepped forward, an old sword bared in his hand. “What is the meaning of the star that fell?”

The priest glared at him as if such a question were an impertinence. “Do you fear the star, barbarian? Do you fear it more, even, than the shadow of this temple?”

“I am not a barbarian!” Bo-ugan shouted. “You dogs who hide in stone, what do you mean by sending such a star down upon the land?”

“Fool!” spat the priest. “Begone from here. Return beyond the river and no harm will come to you…” But now many howling voices, fearful and angry, drowned out the last of the robed man’s words; before Bo-ugan could restore calm, someone notched an arrow and loosed it toward the robed priest.

The arrow missed; either that, or by some unseen power the strange man caused it to go awry. The steel head broke on the hard basalt, shooting sparks.

“Fools!” screamed the sorcerer.

If any of Bo-ugan’s men had had their wits about them, they would have sensed that the man of the temple was as fearful of them as they were of the temple and the star. But any chance of restoring order vanished with the loosed arrow. More arrows flew—so many, so quickly and haphazardly that Bo-ugan and a number of others in the forefront ducked low, lest they be struck by missiles from their own men.

The sorcerer in the door stepped boldly forth. From behind him came another half-dozen men, blue-robed and weaponless, pride and power in their bearing. They began to yell in an unknown tongue and to gesticulate madly, as if trying to push back the villagers with sounds and motions.

Suddenly one of the wild arrows struck a priest; he shrieked and dropped to his knees. He pulled the arrow from his side and cast it contemptuously to the ground, then toppled sidewise.

Realizing that this was a turning point, Bo-ugan raised his sword and led the charge toward the open door. The priests withdrew hurriedly, leaving their bleeding comrade in the field in order to secure the stone door before any more of them were hurt or before the village warriors could gain access. As the thick stone door of the temple rumbled shut, the maddened villagers made short work of the wounded priest, venting their frustration and anger on him with knives, clubs and swords.

Afternoon dwindled into twilight. The rain ceased, and Bo-ugan’s troop made camp on the plain, believing that they had now secured territorial rights. Some argued that the sorcerers were mere madmen and that the tribes had been foolish to be fearful of this temple and its inhabitants for so many generations. Certainly the man they had disemboweled had not been very effective in fighting them off with spells or incantations.

But, as the sun fell, casting long purple shadows across the brown fields, a tall figure appeared at an open window on the first level of the ziggurat above them. Bo-ugan and his headmen and warriors stared up as the men, dressed like the others in a blue robe, called out:

“Fools! Barbarians! Will you be gone from here peacefully, or shall we unleash death upon you?”

The response was another arrow, which flew up from the crowd below and struck the stone just below the priest’s ledgeless window.

The man disappeared; only the flutter of his hands appeared in the window—quickly moving hands, dropping a flurry of small, scintillating crystals into the air above the villagers. Bo-ugan and the others, curious but unalarmed, stared up as the crystals drifted toward them like giant snowflakes.

Suddenly the objects burst into flame—a flame that did not die out in the wind.

The villagers shrieked and ran, falling against each other in their panic.^Bo-i^gan, his headmen and the bulk of his warriors escaped, but the blazing crystals fell upon some twenty of the villagers and burned them—set them afire instantly, impossibly. They screamed for but a moment, and then their voices were drowned out by the fearsome snapping and hissing of flesh being consumed in flame.

The shining flakes did not char so much as a blade of weed where they fell onto the plain.

Bo-ugan roared with anguish and fury, urging his men to vengeance. They stormed the basalt rock of the ziggurat, uselessly hammering at it with their sword hilts and clubs. Again shining flakes were thrown down on them. Men shouted as they saw them and, more quickly now, scurried out of their path—but still five of their number became raw sheets of flame that was like no earthly fire.

Bo-ugan understood that it was useless to continue this way. “Retreat!” he yelled. “Back to the river!”

In that moment Bo-ugan proved himself a leader of his men. For, in spite of their frantic wrath, he was able to get control of them—to force them to pull back across the fieldland, and at last to cross the river and return to their villages.

“This is war!” he promised his troops before they dispersed. “We will return with weapons of siege and slay them all. Their magic shall not save them!”

And so, as night fell, they disbanded to retire to their various villages, leaving behind on the steppe one shredded corpse and twenty-five burnt ones—the first dead of the war, the first memories of the long conflict.

On the mountain, too, night was falling, smoky and dark and wet. The men in the crater had finally made a net out of the rope they had brought, secured the stone and tied it to their oak poles. Lifting the thing up, they snapped several strands and broke a pole: it was very heavy for its size. Then there were other delays as they fought their way up the unsure side of the hole to Thotas and the other waiting sorcerers.

The trip back down the mountain was even more hazardous; problems developed regularly, as though their handling the stone had unleashed a Solis’s Tomb of problems. One young priest fell and snapped his ankle; he hobbled on with the aid of two others. The torches they had brought did not burn well in the intermittent drizzle; and one torchbearer stumbled on the rocky mountain path and burned himself badly. But the worst of the strange misfortunes occurred when, halfway down the mountain, the men carrying the swaying rock yelled suddenly, dropped it to the ground and backed away from it.

“It’s alive! It’s alive!”

Thotas turned on them, snarling.

“It lives—it moved!” protested his young sorcerers.

“Fools!” Thotas spat. Yet he came close to the star-stone and peered at it. “You with torches—bring some light.”

If the stone had indeed moved, it did not do so under the illumination of those smoky flames and the scrutiny of Thotas’s hard gaze. The Master reached out and felt a warmth issuing from it; it was still hot, despite the drizzle.

“Take it up,” he ordered his young men; when they were slow to obey, he stood tall and lifted a ringed hand menacingly as though a curse might issue from it. “Do as I command!”

Cowed, telling themselves that their fear had surely been just a delusion due to exhaustion, the bearers lifted their poles again and continued down the mountain, following the robed form of their Master, whose way was lit through the forest by breeze-fanned torches sizzling in the damp.

At dawn, Master Thotas with his ministers and the bearers of the star-stone returned to the ziggurat— tired, dirty, but with their prize intact.

Told of the villagers’ attack, Thotas showed little concern. Under his orders, fresh men from the temple took charge of the star and carried it, grunting and huffing under its weight, up the interior stairs and corridors of the ziggurat, to place it finally on an ancient altar in the high temple.

Once it was in place, Thotas told the men to go. They closed the doors behind them, and the high priest stood alone with his gift from the gods—his gift, for which he and his predecessors had prayed and worked dark magic through long generations…

Dawnlight was beaming through the two windows of the chamber, but the fallen stone from heaven now appeared frosty and cool. Not approaching the thing but staring at it in undisguised wonder, Thotas whispered to it—spoke to it…and perhaps to himself.

“You are the long-awaited visitation,” he muttered. “You have come to me from the dark gods. You shall bring me great power.”

He stepped closer, entranced by the eerie glow of the star. Sweat appeared on his brow. His hands trembled as he took one step forward, then another and finally halted, staring at the thing.

“Power from the dark gods,” Thotas whispered. “And soon I shall hold all, all!”

The star trembled.

Thotas gasped. The sunlight seemed to strike from the stone a brighter glow. And then, trembling with light, the star spoke:

Fool! You hold me prisoner now with your earthly spells, but I will mean your death! I grant you no power of my own will. I bring you death!

Thotas cried out and staggered backward. He stumbled into the wall, throwing out his arms to support himself, his eyes wide with astonishment, his mouth open, the glare of the stone almost blinding him.

The stone ceased its trembling and dimmed somewhat. Thotas ran forward and, grasping the star in both hands, screamed at it:

“Speak again! Speak again!”

There was no response. Frantically, the sorcerer pushed and pulled at the stone, demanding of it over and over, “Speak again! Speak again! Speak again!”

A loud pounding sounded on his door from those outside who had heard their master shriek.

“Speak again,” Thotas groaned, holding the stone, feeling its warmth course up his hands and into his heart and brain. “Speak—again…”

Still holding onto it, he slumped to the floor, leaning against the altar while voices outside the barred door called to him in frantic concern for his safety.

For six days the plains were quiet. On the dawn of the seventh day after the fruitless attack upon the ziggurat, Bo-ugan and the village headmen and their warriors began to move heavy equipment across the river: ladders, rams, crude scaling towers and catapults. They had spent the time in seclusion building these things. It took them half a day to move their equipment and men across the river and the plain, but by noon the small army appeared ready for an assault on the ziggurat.

Bo-ugan had given the matter much thought and had decided that an attack on only one front might open his men to too many perils. So on the sixth night, before dawn, he ordered two contingents of warriors to circle around through the fields, one to the east and one to the west, and to ascend the mountain above the temple. There they were to watch how the assault from the plain went, and to take action when the attention of the temple priests was drawn towards the field army.

The priests in the ziggurat had watched the daylight operations from their protected height, marking Bo-ugan and his men as fools. They had alerted Thotas to the situation, and Thotas had gone to a window and looked out on the horde of advancing men.

“Aye, fools indeed!” he proclaimed.

Then he retired, as he had every day since the capture of the star, into the high temple to visit with it. The passage of days had seen changes in the chamber, for Thotas had drawn magic circles about the altar, had lit oil lamps and cast spells of power around the stone so that it was tightly trapped within a field of earth-magic of his own design. Then, with the aid of Matius, his oldest and strongest retainer, he had performed his most powerful spells in an attempt to discover if he would be able to direct the star according to his own will.

Now, while Matius sat in a corner of the chamber, chanting and waving a smoking censer, Thotas sat motionless and concentrated on the star. And as he did so he felt great power surging through him…

When the first stones from the catapults smashed against the rock walls of the ziggurat and the first howls of warriors lifted into the sky, Thotas moved from the high chamber and went out to meet his enemies.

In the battle that day sorcery at first prevailed against brute strength and simple weapons. Bo-ugan’s men raised ladders against the walls; the ladders and the men on them were pushed back into the field and burnt to ashes by the fire-crystals. At the same time, several arrows and catapulted stones found their mark among those manning the walls of the ziggurat, and many robed men fell.

Then the two companies Bo-ugan had sent up the mountain hastened down the rocky slope to the ziggurat, as secretly as they could. One hundred men swiftly gained access to the unguarded upper levels of the walls—unguarded because the idea of attack from an upper quarter had not entered the minds of anyone in the ziggurat. Scaling the high ramparts, the warriors dropped into walled walkways, smashed in doors and entered the topmost rooms of the structure. Surprised priests were cut down by sword and knife and club.

Those inside quickly learned what was happening and turned their attentions to battle on a second front. For the first time in all its remembered history, the Temple of the Crimson Sun was red with the blood of warfare.

Under the direction of a young warrior named Abruk, the invaders from the mountainside took command of several rooms and threw out ropes to their comrades still on the plain. Bo-ugan ordered soldiers to lift ladders to those windows held by their fellows; at the same time, he set others to work digging trenches beneath the basalt foundations of the temple and ordered flaming arrows sent through windows wherever priests appeared frantically casting spells or building up sorcerous energy.

Within the ziggurat, Thotas raged. Leading the way to the rooms Abruk had captured, he smashed down doors and slew the hundred soldiers in those rooms by virtue of the power he had drawn from the star-stone, throwing out his hands and sending forth wave after wave of energy that killed them where they stood. Matius and other retainers aided their master with lesser magic; when Bo-ugan’s men climbed the ladders and made their way through the windows of the rooms they, too, were destroyed by sorcerous power.

But so much exertion had weakened Thotas and his retainers. They retired to the interior of the ziggurat while lesser wizards hurried through the corridors and chambers, setting up guardposts and barricades, slaying or being slain by the last of those trapped warriors who still roamed the holy redoubt of the Crimson Sun. In those upper levels of the ziggurat there was much fire damage and slaughter of Thotas’s priests; but every soldier who had gained access that day was killed. On the plain, every ladder and scaling tower which Bo-ugan had ordered built was destroyed or thrown back. His men lay in piles of charred death; little more than half his army remained, and only three of his headmen.

The troops dug themselves trenches in the field, and as night came down they piled rocks to form walls to protect themselves. The great siege had begun.

Several days later, soldiers burrowing beneath the walls gained access to the ziggurat in the middle of the night, and though many were slain forcing their way in, robed men also died. By dawn Bo-ugan and his men could claim their first lasting victory—breaching of the temple-fortress and control of one of its outer rooms.

The following day, according to the routine he had established, Bo-ugan sent a number of his men back across the field to rest themselves in the villages and send reinforcements with fresh muscles and weapons. That day he set two more teams to work burrowing under the foundation stones of the ziggurat; that night, his men fought bloodily against robed men and gained access to a second room.

Alarmed, Thotas retired to the high temple chamber to confer with his star from the gods. Entranced by it, he did not come out for three days.

When he did come out, Matius was alarmed to see a new madness in his eyes.

The siege went on for weeks, then stretched into months. Bo-ugan’s men won room after room, lost them, then regained them in battles pitting muscle and steel against sorcery.

Fall turned into winter; cold gripped the men on the plains. To prepare for it they built stone forts. A path was beaten across the snowy grassland, marking the route of reinforcements and supplies. Men died and were replaced by others. The wounded were sent back to the villages to recuperate or die. Babies born that winter were baptized with curses against the enemy in the ziggurat.

When spring came, Bo-ugan and his men redoubled their efforts and, by summer, had gained half the lowest floor of the temple-pyramid. Thotas would sometimes lead his retainers and his young acolytes against the warriors, but more and more he retired to his chamber, or to the star-temple, and only listen to reports on how the battle went. Once, in the spring, some of his more foolhardy sorcerers had sallied forth in a band to battle the warriors on the field; they had been cut down, for they were too weak without the protection of their comrades and the power of the ziggurat.

The spring also brought raiders and marauders who, learning of the protracted siege and hearing rumors of untold wealth within the temple, sold their swords to Bo-ugan and lent their might on speculation. The villages, which had been separate and scattered along the river for a league and a half, now grew into one large, long town. Huts and fortresses were built to connect them, the people on the outskirts moving in to share home and food with the people of Bo-ugan’s village.

The original cause of the war became forgotten a year after it had begun. The star from the heavens? Who knew what that meant? Now Joris was fighting because his brother Koloti had been killed, and Thaum was fighting because he knew the sorcerers had hoarded vast riches, and Ivarm was there because he believed Bo-ugan to be a heroic warrior called by the gods to defeat all evil. The war bent the passions of all men to itself.

The second winter found Bo-ugan in command of a small army. Younger sons, more accustomed now to war than farming, followed their fathers and elder brothers across the plains to take up burning arrow and iron sword against the demonic men in robes. The second spring saw Bo-ugan and his men beginning to gain access to the second floor of the huge temple. The priests within were learning armed warfare as well as sorcery.

By the end of the second year of the siege, the’ war was a way of life. Bo-ugan’s small village and the other villages around it had become a fortified town. Wives and lovers made the trek across the fields to visit their husbands and lovers in the fortifications on the steppe, or even within the safest perimeters of the ziggurat. Some of these women learned swordplay and warfare too, and took up arms against the priests of the temple. More and more bands of free swords joined the growing army. Harvests of fish, fiber, fruits and some wheat and vegetables, gathered and fanned by women and young girls and boys outside the perimeter of the war, were traded down the river for iron and weapons. Even a few wizards were hired to fight on Bo-ugan’s side, but their sorcery seemed to avail little against the great strength of the ziggurat and the priests of the Order of the Crimson Sun.

Another winter passed into spring, and another summer and fall into winter. Babies born on the night of the first battle were raised on tales of warfare and weaponry. Promises of gold and revenge kept the army going, and death reinforced the determination of those who still lived. Glorious life in the other world was promised to those who went down in battle.

A few claimed to see madness in it and left the region, warning that the star had cursed the land. But for most the war was practical, immediate, necessary and urgent. They stayed and fought, and often died.

More winters passed; the town on the river grew; crops were sent downriver, and weapons were sent up.

For ten years the battle for the ziggurat continued, an open invitation for anyone with a sword for hire and a hungry belly…

PART I

The Journey

Chapter 1

The People of the Ziggurat

Sonja stepped ahead cautiously a few more paces and paused again in her advance. Behind her a dozen soldiers paused as well, the light from their torches highlighting her flame-red hair. Then her sword was out, and she waved her free arm behind her, gesturing for those following to advance.

“Daron!” she whispered.

A young, dark-haired warrior stepped close to her. Without speaking, she motioned for him to thrust forward his torch so that she and the others might see more clearly.

The flaring orange torchlight showed them only an empty corridor ahead, at least for the next few rods. But Sonja noticed a vertical shadow along the right-hand wall.

“A corner,” she whispered to Daron.

All was silence in that corridor. Sonja and Daron and the men behind them stood in tense silence. They had advanced farther than Bo-ugan’s men had the day before, and that made Sonja doubly suspicious.

“Shine your light there,” she whispered again to Daron. “My instinct tells me—”

But Daron had stepped ahead even as she spoke, wary, one hand holding aloft the torch, the other resting 21 ready on the pommel of his scabbarded blade. The light wavered along the brick wall and the tamped-earth floor and picked out a few hazy details behind that corner…

“Move!” Sonja yelled suddenly, pushing Daron aside as she lunged forward.

The thing behind the comer lurched into view—tall, hulking, groping out of the dark shadows. It lifted its arms and stumbled forward, opening its jaws slackly as if emitting a silent scream. Its glassy eyes burned yellow with the sorcerous energy that infused it: an animated corpse—one of the men lost in this corridor yesterday…

A clatter of blades pulled free of scabbards sounded behind Sonja—the sounds of men pressing forward, eager for action. With the supple ease of a sword-adept, the red-haired Hyrkanian lifted her blade in time to meet the corpse’s advance, skewering it deftly through the chest, then ripping sidewise.

Her movement tilted the thing off balance, throwing it off its course. The arms lifted, the back bent and the head smashed against the wall. Sonja’s blade, ripping free, left a trail of dried blood and dessicated flesh hanging momentarily in the air.

“The torch, Daron!” she yelled. “Give it the torch!”

But again he had anticipated her, hurling the fire against the thing and completing his motion with the drawing of his sword from its sheath. Sluggishly trying to push itself free of the wall, the corpse staggered under the impact. The resinous torch clung to its withered flesh and clothes, engulfing the thing swiftly in a licking red blaze. Unscreaming, it twisted away from the wall and, guided by the perverse instincts given it by its sorcerous masters, strove to throw itself into the knot of warriors that blocked the corridor.

Sonja and Daron, following the strategy they had used more than once already, moved to either side of the corridor and let the men behind advance. Those armed with long oak poles thrust ahead, caught the walking, blazing corpse and heaved it back.

Their defense was well-timed, for just as the cadaver was heaved backward, one of its masters stepped into view behind it—a slender man, eyes blazing, blue robe highlighted by the flames that enveloped his monster.

“Dogs!” the young priest shouted, lifting his arms in the prelude to a magical gesture.

The corpse fell against him, and he shrieked as the flames spread to him, catching his robe afire. The stench of burning flesh choked the passageway.

Another priest stepped quickly from behind the protection of the corner, his form seen dimly through the oily smoke, his arms already extended, rings glistening on his fingers, his eyes blazing with wrath.

“Imthu!” he screamed. “Na’a ba-aba sui suthuth!”

A blast of magical power issued in a hissing roar from his hands. Sonja and Daron, still on either side of the corridor, barely escaped that withering stream but felt its diabolic heat. Two behind them fell, one with his head blackened to ash, the second with his arm charred to the bone. That one had time to scream as he fell to the floor.

Sonja desperately threw herself forward, hoping the wizard could not unleash a second bolt of power before she could reach him. Howling with hatred, she whipped her blade upward and slashed. The priest faced her and brought his fisted hands up—and they were sheared from their wrists in a blur of steel-.

Screaming, he fell back, the ends of his arms spouting blood. Sonja followed him, slowing her advance only slightly to glance sidelong and judge whether more danger awaited behind that comer. As the priest dropped against the entrance of the arched side corridor, she swung her blade again and caught him at the neck. His head fell onto his shoulder, connected to the spurting neck only by a flap of skin and sinew.

Sonja gained her balance and braced herself against the wall, staring, red blade up, into the side corridor. Daron was beside her already, torch out, but all they saw at the end of the brief hall was a closed iron door. Then from beyond it came the sound of another iron door being slammed shut. Whoever else had been waiting behind the first door had witnessed the slaughter of two priests and one corpse, and retreated.

Bo-ugan’s men came forward, eager to kill. But seeing that the battle had been a short one and that its victory had fallen to Sonja, they applauded her skill and, for the time being, made their way back down the corridor.

“They’ll return,” one of them said. “But it appears we hold this corridor now. We’ll brace it this afternoon and start through that door and down the other hall. Well done, Red Sonja!”

She nodded shortly, saying nothing to them but muttering to Daron, “Good aim with your torch.”

“Good aim with your blade!” He smiled at her.

They stepped over their dead on the way back through the corridor. Sonja shook her head at them and tallied the count of casualties she had witnessed since her and Daron’s arrival: forty in less than ten days. ’Too high a price,’ she thought to herself, ‘no matter what lay within this temple.’

But it was not her battle. She only wished to keep her stomach satisfied, and if her sword could do that for her, she had no wish to play general.

When he awoke he felt pain in his right arm and remembered that it had been blasted with sorcerous fire. He pushed himself to one side, then felt more pain coursing in his shoulder. He seemed to sense something—something immaterial, something far above him in the temple—something unseen, nonhuman, that fed on fear and pain…

Weak, shuddering, he dragged himself in the darkness until he bumped into something warm and soft, and knew it for a body. Terrified by the darkness and by the knowledge that he was alive, he screamed for his comrades—

While something, high above, fed on his agony.

Far away, as if in answer to his hoarse pleas, a heavy door grated open, and he heard distant footsteps. He seemed to wheel dizzily in the darkness. He pushed himself back, and his head struck stone. He rested there for a moment and fell into a swoon—but awoke an instant later when another metal door, this one much closer, opened with the grating of hinges.

He opened his eyes and looked into the dazzling brilliance of torches. Behind that light he saw floating, yellow eyes.

“One of them lives, Master Thotas.”

He saw a heavy, fork-bearded face beneath a bald cranium and intense dark eyes that scowled at him. The face was seamed with many wrinkles that somehow gave it an aura of corruption rather than of age.

“Take him,” rasped a grim voice. “We will use him.”

He blacked out momentarily, then felt rough hands lift him up. He screamed in terror and anguish and struggled weakly, aware that he was being carried like a limp, broken doll.

Yet he still sensed the evil thing above him.

Then painful darkness took him again; as he fell into a pit of nightmare, he was dimly aware that a heavy iron door was closing behind him.

“Brace it well!” Thamir told the men as they moved off, carrying their weapons and heavy bags. “Pour salt all around it and brace that iron strongly on the wall.”

“And incense,” a man beside him reminded, “to ward off demons.”

“Oh, hell, and incense, too,” Thamir agreed, coughing in the lingering smoke. “And hang the head of one of the bastards from the ceiling. That seems to work better against them than salt anyway.”

A dozen soldiers moved out into the corridor to do as he had ordered. Thamir turned his attention to Sonja, Daron and a handful of others.

“You’ve been in here three days,” he said to them, looking at the list an assistant handed him. “Bo-ugan says no one is to spend more than three days in here at a stretch. Get your gear and head back to the village for a day. Get some rest and some good food in your bellies.”

Sonja nodded to him and took a moment to adjust the straps on her boots, which were twisted and digging into her calves. To Daron she said, “Let’s go. We’ve earned it.”

They made their way out of Thamir’s makeshift office, exiting by the short corridor that led into the main corridor of the ziggurat’s first floor. Room after room stood empty and guarded by Bo-ugan’s troops. Some, however, were furnished with cots, supplies, extra food and clothes and water jugs. The army had made its home here. There were even a few icons lying about, names scratched on walls; a few personal objects hung above cots.

As they made their way down the torchlit corridor, Sonja and Daron passed a few men seated at a low round table, playing cards. One of them hissed at Daron. He paused, but Sonja walked on, calling to him that she’d see him back at the village. Appreciative eyes followed her tall, shapely form as she continued down the hallway, some leg showing between her boots and pliant mail tunic.

“What do you think?” asked the man who’d stopped Daron, showing him his hand of cards.

“I think she’s really—” said the man across from him.

“Not you, jackass!” laughed the other, while the man in the middle, seated against the wall, leaned his head back and pretended to snore. “What do you think, lad? Has he got me?”

Daron brushed back his straight dark hair and scratched his head. “I can’t very well tell you that.”

“Sure you can! Just nudge my foot or something.”

“Leave him alone,” drawled the man against the wall, his eyes still closed.

“Nice pair of tits under that mail,” said the man at the far end.

Daron grinned at him. “If she heard you say that, she’d probably slice your tongue out.”

“Oh, hell, every woman likes a compliment now and then.”

“That was a compliment?” Daron asked, still smiling.

The other shrugged as if irritated, and looked away.

The man with the cards asked Daron, “But is she as good as she looks?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Come on, lad! We’re all holed up in this stinking pit together. Give us something to think about.”

“She’s as much a soldier as any of you.”

“Look, you came riding in here with her three weeks ago from across the plains. Those plains get cold at night, don’t they, boys? They get cold at night, damn it, and a man and a woman, being a man and a woman—”

“You want my advice on your cards or not?” “What? Sure. Yeah, you want to tell me—”

“Fold ’em,” said Daron.

The one in the middle opened his eyes and straightened up. Sonja’s admirer, on the end, seated himself more comfortably, alert for anything Daron might give away.

“Take your hand,” Daron told the player, slapping him on the shoulder, “and fold it in your lap. Then fold your other hand in your lap, and think of those cold nights out on the plain-with Red Sonja.” He winked at the other two, turned on his heel and continued down the hallway.

It took a moment, but guffaws of laughter followed him down the hall, while the card player looked after Daron and screwed up his face, then chuckled good-naturedly.

Daron shook his head and wandered on, admitting to himself that their talk had gotten his imagination working. He and Sonja had, indeed, spent many a cold night out on those plains together—had spent the entire last month together, pushing their horses and scraping together what sustenance they could. She’d been a welcome sword at the defense of Daron’s village, but the plains-raiders had taken the huts at last. No matter. Daron had left no fond memories behind—his parents had long since vanished, leaving him little but bitterness, and he was close to no one. Like Sonja, he had been a wanderer since his youth. He was still a young man, as Sonja was a young woman, but the bitterness rankled in him and belied his years. He and Sonja riding together on the plains had formed a strong friendship, but no deep love. What exactly did she feel for him, Daron sometimes wondered? If Sonja did feel anything, she hid her heart well.

But he hid his also. It had become necessary for survival.

And no doubt that was true of the swordswoman, as well.

Sonja had not got very far ahead of Daron. She was waiting to exit the temple, having been held back, along with a few others, because monitors in the field outside the underground door had noticed figures on the wall high above. The robed men had not attempted to cast any sorcery over the wall in quite some time, but there was always that possibility. That first quick dash on horseback from the main entrance of the ziggurat to the first stone hut in the field was always made with the knowledge that some sorcerous missile might fall from one from the windows high above.

Finally the guards at die exit decided to chance it. Sonja and Daron and five others mounted steeds and walked them out into the field under a heavy awning. Catching the signal from men stationed in trenches farther on, they kneed their horses and charged into the open, galloping until they neared the first stone hut, then calmed their mounts to a walk.

“Nothing’s ever happened,” Daron remarked to Sonja, “but every time we ride out of there or back in to the temple I always feel it will.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” she told him. “Those sorcerous dogs watch us every moment. They could send something against us whenever they want to. We know it, and they know it. I reckon, Daron, it’s been a long ten years for some of these people.”

“Aye. I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine what could keep them fighting on and on, year after year…”

Daron was younger than Sonja by only a year or two, but sometimes he expressed himself with a naiveté that made him seem much younger. Sonja had remarked that. At first it had bothered her and she had wondered how much she could depend on him. Later, she sensed that this trait was a mask he had developed to hide behind, that much of his personality was so complex and hidden that parts of it surfaced only in exaggerated tendencies—like his naiveté or his sudden outbursts of temper or his falling into deep moods of depression. There was more to Daron than there was to many old men who had lived eventful lives. Yet, even so, he usually seemed to be only a young swordsman, a traveler, with snippets of book-learning picked up here and there.

But, Sonja imagined, there must be strange aspects to her own personality as well, for she had spent nearly two months with Daron now and had not tired of his company.

To his question she replied, “What keeps them at it, you ask?”

“Aye…”

“Fear—revenge—lust for rumored gold. But more than all this, Daron, probably habit. Merely habit. They have almost forgotten any other way. Since the star fell.”

They were trotting a slight distance ahead of the three village warriors who accompanied them. Sonja guessed that it was perhaps just as well that those warriors could not hear the low-voiced speculations of two outsiders such as herself and Daron.

Daron grunted. “I can understand that. But, no—there must be more. Are they after the star?”

Sonja shrugged. “Every man is after something different. That’s always the way it is with battle. It begins with some cause, noble or ignoble, but very quickly it becomes mired in a swamp of personal grievances and greed and vengeance.”

“Strange for you to say that. You’re a hired sword.”

“But I’ve been careful about selling my sword for a cause. When I have, I’ve seen it through—but quickly. Noble causes usually come down to mere pretense, anyway. Self-survival or greed, that’s all most noble causes turn out to be.”

It was afternoon; the sun was dipping toward the low hills far to the west. Sonja slapped flies and mosquitoes away and said, “I talk too much. I’m tired, I’m hungry, so everything seems sour.”

But Daron was thinking; he fell very quiet, so quiet that Sonja noticed. Looking at him, she saw that the naive young man was gone; a dismal, brooding cloud was cloaking him. The hardened observer of life, the har-borer of inner secrets, now rode beside her.

“They’ve done something to the land, haven’t they?” He put it as a question—not out of uncertainty, Sonja felt, but thinking aloud.

“Have they, Daron?”

He turned in his saddle, looking behind him, at the ziggurat, at the plain, at the scattered stone huts and the three warriors who rode behind them talking among themselves. “They’ve done something to the land. A subtle sorcery.”

“You mean the temple-priests?” Sonja asked. “But, what?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something…To affect crops, or soldiers’ minds…”

They rode on, not speaking, and presently came to the wide bridge that had been erected years ago. It was summer; the river was low, and the pylons of the bridge were thickly encrusted with dried mud that housed wasp nests and crawling vermin. A frog or fish plopped in the water as their horses’ hoofs thumped on the wooden planks.

At the crest of the bridge they saw the village spread before them—still called a village although it was now a town walled with strong timbers and stonework. The evening breezes carried the smell of cooking fires, the aromas of fish and vegetables and beef. Sonja’s stomach growled.

“Mitra!” she moaned, shifting in her saddle. “Do I need food and some rest!”

They approached the village, and the doors were pulled open to let them in. As Sonja rode past the troops in the small courtyard, the man in charge of them said to her, “Bo-ugan would like to speak with you.”

“Do I have time for a bath and a meal first?”

“I think he’d rather see you immediately. My orders were, as soon as you returned.”

Sonja sighed and dismounted, stretching her long legs. “See you later,” she said to Daron, then walked off with the soldier.

“Later,” Daron said, looking up at the darkening sky.

Bo-ugan was in his house, sitting at his table. With him were a few young warriors and the Elder Agthor—the only surviving headman, other than Bo-ugan himself, from the days of the five villages. Bo-ugan motioned to Sonja to sit across from him. There was a plate of freshly cooked fowl and a jug of wine on the table.

“Help yourself, Red Sonja,” said Bo-ugan.

She nodded and dug in, appreciative of the lack of ceremony.

Ten years of warfare, tension and generalship of the expanding village army had made Bo-ugan, once a hot-tempered, careless man of middle years, into a self-controlled, reflective old warrior. His long white hair, unshorn since that day he first led his men across the river to the ziggurat, was braided and corded behind his neck. His beard was trimmed short, as was his mustache; the deep gullies of wrinkles around his eyes and in his cheeks were from hard thought rather than age. His expression, his posture, his manner, all revealed him as a master of men, but a man whose life might have gone unrecorded or unrecognized but for the events which had thrust him suddenly forward. The brashness and temper of youth and middle age were gone.

As Sonja ate and drank, Bo-ugan’s stem, careful gaze measured and studied her. He allowed her to quell the pangs of hunger and waited until she had quaffed a final swallow of the sweet red wine before addressing her.

“I won’t detain you long,” he assured her in his deep, melancholy voice. “I know you’re exhausted and would like nothing more than a bath and some sleep. But from what I have learned of you since you first came here, Red Sonja, I think it would be good for my retainers and me to solicit your opinion on some matters regarding the siege.”

“And what have you learned of me?”

His words, as his actions, were controlled and deliberate.

“They say you are a sword-adept of unusual skill—and, more, that you have served in many campaigns.”

“I haven’t been here long,” Sonja replied, matching Bo-ugan’s steady gaze. “I’ll tell you what I can—offer whatever opinion I can.”

“Give this siege some thought,” Bo-ugan told her. “You needn’t answer us immediately. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day something might come to you. Feel free to mention it to me at any time.”

Sonja sat back, feeling stronger and more awake for the food in her belly. She wiped her lips with her hand, asking Bo-ugan, “What exactly is your problem?”

“This siege has continued unabated for ten years,” he said. “After the first year’s assault it became apparent to me that the sorcerers in the temple had withdrawn, that they would put up defenses within and fight to hold them, but otherwise were more or less content to let us exhaust ourselves. Seeing that, I developed strategies to move my men at the least cost to ourselves. I have even occasionally hired my own sorcerers and diviners, hoping that they might gain me something that my swords could not. From them I learned that the man who controls that citadel is a wizard named Thotas, who is known as High Master of the Order of the Crimson Sun. You have traveled widely and fought sorcery before, Red Sonja. Have you heard of this man?”

“I have fought sorcery, true—but never have I heard of Thotas.”

“The sorcerers that I hired helped me little. I know the man’s name, but that is all. If he is a powerful sorcerer, then I presume his place is well-guarded. Thus the length of my siege. The only other thing I learned was speculation concerning the fallen star.”

“Then that legend is true?”

“It is no legend. I myself, and some of the men in this room, saw it crash into the mountain ten years ago. My hired sorcerers told me that it may be an evil that Thotas and his Order called down from the gods. Its secrets have taken long to uncover, if Thotas has uncovered them at all. It may even have mastered Thotas himself and, in its own way, is spreading evil. I do not know. I presume it is as the sorcerers told me—some thing from the gods or demons. But in the ten years of this siege I have seen changes in my land: the fields are slowly dying; our animals are dying; my warriors are growing weaker„and their women fall ill. Worse, more and more of our children are bom dead, or diseased, or crippled. I’ve discovered that water from the springs and ponds closest to the temple are poisoned; for men who drink too regularly from them weaken and die a lingering death. I have seen this. Thotas, or the star, is responsible—I am sure of it. And I know that my people cannot afford another ten years of siege.”

“Then you want this war ended?”

“Aye, and as quickly as possible.’ My retainers and I have attempted every device and strategy that we’ve thought of. Now we are asking for the opinions of hired veterans, casting about for a certain way to end this war quickly.”

Sonja understood his dilemma; a dozen possible strategies rose to her mind, but just as quickly she discarded them, knowing that Bo-ugan must have already attempted them all.

“I’ll need time to consider this,” she said.

“Of course. But I know you’re intelligent and you’ve fought in many campaigns. If you can think of something, even a new variation of something we’ve already tried, let me know. I want this battle ended. I want Thotas’s head on my sword and that evil star removed from my land.”

“That seems reasonable enough.” Sonja nodded to Bo-ugan and rose to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me—”

Bo-ugan leaned forward, offering her his gloved hand. Sonja took it. There was strength on both sides.

“Take your rest,” Bo-ugan told her. “Come to me tomorrow if even the simplest idea occurs to you. We will discuss it, my retainers and I.”

“Of course.” Sonja bade him farewell and left his hut.

When she had gone, Bo-ugan felt the eyes of his men upon him. Looking at none of them in particular, he said, “She is a strong warrior. She works at one thing at a time, does not advance an opinion on what she does not know, assumes nothing that can’t be relied upon, learns what she needs to know.”

He stretched, tired of the worry and the work, and reached for his cup of wine. Then he pulled toward him that piece of parchment which had on it a map of the temple—the little that was absolutely known, the much that was only guesswork—and, as he had for many weeks and months and years on end, he studied it and tried to out-scheme the temple.

The sun was down. Oil lamps and torches lit up the streets and buildings of the village. Sounds carried—of men working, of mothers scolding children, of dogs barking in alleys. Having decided to push Bo-ugan’s request to the back of her mind until she had slept on it, Sonja made her way to her hut—the long hut she shared with a score of other hired swords and mercenaries.

Out of deference to her sex, lest the sight of a naked woman in the same room with a dozen or more men lead to havoc, Sonja’s cot was placed in a remote comer of the hut. She had refused domicile in a private residence, urging Bo-ugan and his men to regard her as a warrior like the rest; at the same time, she had been the first to suggest some sort of curtain to shield her from the others.

She found men at a table in the center of the room, talking and drinking and playing cards. They nodded to her, used to her presence by this time. Daron was lying on his cot, near Sonja’s own. He did not sit up as he asked her, “How did it go with Bo-ugan?”

She shrugged, undoing her sword belt, stripping off her sleeveless tunic of light mail and depositing them at the side of her bed against the wall. “He merely interviewed me. He’s discussing strategies with his men and wanted my opinion. I didn’t have any for him.”

“Ten years is a long time,” Daron commented, staring at the ceiling.

“Aye,” Sonja agreed absently—and her thoughts slipped back ten years into her own past, to when she had been a stripling girl on her father’s farm in Hyrkania…

She needed a bath but was too exhausted; she would wash in the morning.

Daron turned his head and stared at her. “Well?”

“What?” Sonja asked, removing her sword from its scabbard and examining it. It would need to be oiled and polished on the morrow.

“He wants to end this war, doesn’t he? His land is suffering.”

Sonja’s brow knit. “Aye, that’s true…”

“There could be a way,” Daron confided to her, keeping his voice low, although the other men in the room were absorbed in talk and card playing.

“And what would that be, Daron?”

“Sorcery. Fight magic with magic.”

“He’s hired sorcerers; they’ve done him no good. That temple is strong.”

Daron turned his face away.

Sonja sheathed her blade with a loud clang. “Unless you have something more specific in mind.”

Daron did not reply.

“Daron?”

He sat up, looked at her and swung his legs to the floor. “Nothing specific,” he said. “Just…a thought.”

“Damn it, Daron, spit it out if you’ve got something.” He shook his head. “Nothing. Just a thought.” He smiled crookedly at her, as if he were a naive boy again, a naive boy not comprehending what was happening. Then he excused himself with, “I need some fresh air. See you in the morning.”

Too tired to start an argument, Sonja grunted at him, swallowed her frustration and watched the young man exit the hut. Then she crossed the room to light a tarred straw at one of the lamps at the table.

“Good night, gentlemen.”

“Good night, Red Sonia. Kill any today?”

“Two of ’em,” she replied, walking away.

“Sight more than Doth-odo has for a while,” the man grinned.

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Doth-odo told him.

Sonja lit the small lamp which stood on a crate by her cot and pulled the drape around her bed. It was the signal for all the men at the table to glance at that corner of the room. It was small entertainment for them, discreet, but something they’d come to count on. For, that small lamp in Sonja’s corner cast her silhouette upon the curtain as she undressed. First her soft leather tunic came off, her arms lifting high above her head to pull it free, her full breasts first jutting out, then dropping suddenly as the garment slipped free of them. Then, standing, she bent to slip off her boots, and the men at the table had a fine profile of her breasts swaying forward, then of her hips and buttocks and long legs as she kicked the boots free. Finally she turned her back to the curtain, and the men were given a good view of her entire figure just before she capped the lamp and her silhouette vanished into darkness. Then came the rustling of her lying down on her cot and pulling up the coverlet, and soon her gentle breathing as she slept. It was not a heavy sleep but one that altered its rhythm whenever a footfall sounded too near her cot—but it was sleep.

The men at the table returned to their cards and talk with an increasing din. There was little lust in their admiration of Sonja’s silhouette, merely appreciation and perhaps nostalgia—romantic memories of wives or lovers no longer alive; appreciation for an attractive woman with a fine figure. Women could be had; whores could be had. Perhaps it was just acknowledgment that Sonja, as good a warrior as any man there—all admitted it—was, in fact, a splendid woman as well. There was irony and humor in it. Sonja was something unique, whether in silhouette or in temper or in battle.

If she suspected that her shadow on that curtain was watched and admired it never bothered her. Daron had never mentioned it to her, nor had any of the other men. Always, as soon as Sonja’s sighs of sleep were heard, attention turned from her to cards and wine and speculation about who would be called up next day to ride across the river and make war with sorcery.

“Don’t kill him,” Thotas warned the priest as the screams of the wounded warrior filled the room. “We don’t want him dead. If we can learn nothing from him, then release him.”

“Aye, Master. He’s at his limit, I think.”

The captive one-armed soldier shivered and moaned under the glare of the torches as he was bent back on the wheel. Blood drooled from his mouth, tears fell down his cheeks.

Thotas stepped near, placing a clawlike hand on the man’s matted wet hair. For a moment he stood erect, then closed his eyes and shuddered. Finally he removed his hand and sneered.

“I sense nothing…nothing! This man is no one. He can tell us nothing.”

“Shall I release him, Master?”

“Release him slowly, then feed him drink and boil chot leaves. That will revive him for a while. I want him to be strong enough to return to his fellows.”

“Return?”

“Aye. We will send him back to the others. He won’t live long, and he can’t tell them anything. Scar him with a light brand. That will inspire some fear in them.”

“Aye, Master Thotas.”

Gradually, the priest relaxed the soldier’s bonds, and Thotas moved out of the chamber and up the stairs, beneath the tall shadows and the whisper of orange-glowing torches.

Chapter 2

Swords Against Evil

Dawn rose warm and misty across the fields. In the village of Bo-ugan the torches and lamps were one by one extinguished, and the coals of the night’s fires dampened and put out. Those soldiers who had stood watch through the night now came down from the parapets and entered their barracks or returned to their homes to eat breakfast and sleep. Other men came to take their places, mounting the log stairs that overlooked the plain, the stone huts and small forts—and the inevitable ziggurat set against the mountain.

The temple-pyramid presented a slightly different aspect now from what it had ten years ago. Whereas formerly the upper levels were free of the mountainside, they had now been linked to it by a solid and thick rib of masonry. This had been erected, none knew how, eight years ago during a week of storms so violent that the battle had been suspended. Once, the lower levels of this structure were broken into, revealing that it housed tunnels connecting the upper levels of the ziggurat directly to the mountain. But the attackers had been driven back with such sorcerous fury, sustaining such heavy casualties, that they seldom thereafter ventured against that quarter. They had then attempted occasional diversionary sorties over the upper walls, but these last always turned out to be suicide missions. Bo-ugan guessed from the ferocity of the defense at the high levels that 38 the star must be housed in the crowning temple, even as some of his hired sorcerers claimed.

In Bougankad, the town square had become a meeting place for all, both villagers and mercenaries, who needed companionship or gossip at any time during the day. It was not truly a square; ten years ago it had simply been a path leading past huts to Bo-ugan’s chieftain’s hut, but now it had grown up into a town center. Here were stone benches and wells of drinking water. Here, too, were bricked fire pits, protected by awnings from rain or snow. Like the memories of the villagers, these fires burned constantly.

Sonja was awake and up at the first noises of morning. Dressed in her tunic and boots, and as always carrying her sword with her, she exited the long barracks-hut and tromped up a well-worn path to a bathing house just off the central square. The bathing house was far from elaborate—no more than two brick rooms erected Ground a natural hot spring, one room for women, another for men. In good weather, as now, it was open to the sky; when summer fled and colder seasons approached, long sheets of cloth and animal skin could be drawn over the open roofs.

Sonja went through the door, turned the comer and entered the women’s section. Sitting around on stones were a few early risers, mostly young mothers bouncing children on their laps and gossiping as they bathed. Sonja returned their greetings, stripped off her tunic and eased herself thankfully into the calm warmth of the spring water. She scrubbed herself all over with sand, and then dunked herself. She borrowed some oil from one of the women and cleaned herself thoroughly. The oil smelt sour but did a good job; it seemed the only cleansing agent these villagers knew. Finally she jumped into the pool again to rinse off, then dried herself and dressed in her tunic once more. When she exited the bath house, the sun was fully up and sounds from the square indicated that the village was coming to life.

In the barracks she donned her sleeveless mail shirt and combed her hair. Daron was still asleep on his cot. Sonja did not waken him; a few others still slept as well. The only one awake besides Sonja was at the table, sipping his bowl of morning gruel.

“How late did he stay out last night?” Sonja asked this veteran.

“Daron? Pretty late. We’d all turned in. I heard him come in after three strikes of the gong.”

Sonja nodded. Late indeed. What could have kept Daron up half the night, exhausted as he had been? “I’ve seen his kind before,” the veteran commented. The comment struck Sonja the wrong way, like an accusation or a prejudice. “I beg your pardon?”

The man continued sipping his gruel. “Young kids. Think too much. Trying to solve the problems of the world.”

“That’s his problem?”

The man smiled. “That, or he’s out chasing girls.” Sonja was irritated, but took care not to show it. She approached him, bent close and sniffed his gruel. “What’s in that?” she asked.

“In this? Mitra only know. Tastes like hell.”

She pursed her lips. “Must not be in the gruel, then.”

“What’re you talking about?” He stopped eating and looked up at her.

“Oh, I’ve seen your kind before,” Sonja told him. “But I always thought it was something in their food that did it to them.”

Perplexed, he stared at her. Sonja grinned at him, then made her way out.

A breakfast table had been set up in the square. Sonja joined the line and picked up a bowl and spoon. An old warrior with a short, grizzled beard was in front of her. When he realized that it was Sonja behind him, he bade her good morning and asked how her days in the ziggurat had gone.

“Knifed a few,” Sonja told him. “Same old story.”

“Not making any progress in there, are they?” “Don’t seem to be. How have you been, Iatos?” Sonja had liked the man spontaneously when she had first met him, her first day in the village; her positive feelings toward him had increased during her stay here. Iatos had been many things in life; like Sonja and others here, he was a mercenary, an outsider. They shared a common point of view. Iatos had fought in dozens of campaigns. He had regaled Sonja with tales of them nights over the fires—stories of battles he had been in, the men he had served with. Sonja had learned that Iatos had at one time fought beside her father in some campaign she dimly remembered the man mentioning. But Iatos was more than a warrior; chance must have thrown him into that brutal role. His manner was noble, in some ways that of a poet and a philosopher. Though he could tum the edge of his sword with the roughest louts in the camp, he seemed more comfortable spinning stories or pondering the mysteries of life and death. But Sonja was one of the few who openly cared for old Iatos. He was a homosexual, and thus not trusted by many in the camp. While his sword-skill was welcome, he had often been told to keep his distance. Such an arbitrary exclusion by their fellow combatants was another factor that served to bring Sonja closer to Iatos.

The old warrior filled his bowl with gruel, got a cup of herb tea and retired to a bench at one side of the square. Sonja got her own breakfast and followed him.

“You’re quiet this morning, Iatos,” she remarked.

He did not look at her, but studied the milling forms in the square. “I am sad.”

“Why is that?” And as soon as she asked it, some premonition shook her, and she seemed to know his plight before he told her.

“Sporos,” he said. “He was killed two days ago.”

Sporos—Iatos’s current lover, a strong young lad, a good man…

“I’m very sorry, Iatos.”

He shook his head. “I’ve seen too many loved ones stricken down by the gods to grieve for this one over-long, Red Sonja. Does that sound callous?”

“No. It sounds realistic.”

“I’m only weary of always being the survivor,” he confided to her, sipping his tea. “I don’t want to die to bring sorrow to anyone, but I hate the sorrow I must endure when those I love—die, and die, and continue dying. Am I cursed, Sonja?”

“No, Iatos, no. You are merely alive. So were your friends. They simply passed on before you.”

“There must be more to it than that,” he whispered to his gruel.

Sonja slapped him on the shoulder. “You and I are sitting here, filling our bellies so we can ride across that plain to help these mad…well, I’ll be kind, they are feeding me. But to help them fight wizards for possession of a fallen star! That’s all, Iatos. And should there be more to it than that?”

He grinned slowly and faced her, looking into her eyes with a half-frowning smile. “You’re good for me, Red Sonja. If you weren’t a woman…”

“Not you, too!” Sonja laughed at him. “Am I safe from no man?”

They both chuckled and finished their breakfasts.

Warriors, wives, children, animals passed through the square before them. Bo-ugan appeared in company with a number of his retainers and consulted with some men on the wall; then he exited again. Seeing him, Sonja remembered her promise to try to think of some better way of besieging the ziggurat.

The thought was on her lips. She was about to mention it to Iatos when another figure appeared in the square, a hulking youth of sixteen or seventeen summers. He wore no sword but carried on his hip an empty scabbard; neither had he knives nor any other weapons. He was unbathed; his greasy hair hung in long glistening curls down to his shoulders. He drooled. Occasionally his hands jumped as he stumbled in his walk. When he approached the tables where breakfast had been set to get the last of the cold gruel, he dropped two wooden bowls before managing to hold on to a third.

The women who served the large youth treated him with care and pity. Taking his porridge but forgetting to take any tea or utensils to go with it, he moved in his rocking, uncertain gait to an isolated bench, then sat down there and began to drink from the bowl. Much of it spilled down his front; some of this he gathered in his fingers and pushed into his mouth.

“And that one…” Iatos said sorrowfully.

“Urrim?” Sonja asked.

“You know him?”

“Only his name—and that he was reduced to that condition by a battle wound.”

“They caught him on the head,” Iatos told her. “He was struck by a missile—or by some sorcerous bolt. It damaged his senses, yet did not kill him.”

“Better that it had,” Sonja responded.

“We don’t know that. He may be some test of the gods.”

“Better that it had killed him,” she said again, “than that he should have to live like half a man, half an animal.”

“No, no, you can’t say that,” Iatos returned. “Surely there is some purpose to him.”

Sonja shook her head. “I think that’s why I admire you, Iatos. Or one of the reasons.”

The veteran looked at her questioningly, studying her eyes.

“You’ve been through a hell of a lot more than I have, Iatos, and it hasn’t soured you. You still believe there’s some order and sense to all this, don’t you?”

“I believe it, yes, Red Sonja, because I believe that we are limited by our short lives. We see only a tiny portion of-things; we can experience and study and know only a minute fraction of the All. And yet, most people presume to know far more than this.”

“Perhaps we have to,” Sonja told him.

“No, we don’t. We can deal with exactly what happens to us and look at all the things that we can see fairly. Have you ever noticed frogs, Red Sonja? If you set a frog down and slap the ground beside him, the frog will jump. He is surprised. And if you slap the ground a second time, and a third, and a fourth, the frog is as surprised by the last slap as he was by the first. He builds up no habit of experience; he doesn’t come to expect a series of slaps.”

“That’s a good thing, building experience. Expecting another slap.”

“Maybe, maybe not. What if you’ve come to expect slaps and the next thing you hear is music? If you expect slaps, you may react to music as you would to a slap. Whose fault is that? If you’ve grown up with enemies, you think everyone is an enemy. If you’ve used a knife only for killing, then how can you teach yourself that it can also be used for slicing bread—or for carving some beautiful work of art from a piece of wood?”

“But humans are not frogs.”

“Very true, very true,” Iatos assured her. “But then, why expect something when it might not be that? Why presume?”

“This is intriguing,” Sonja admitted, “but it seems idle. What has it to do with Urrim? Should I expect him to be something other than what he appears? What has it to do with you, or me, or Bo-ugan’s campaign against the sorcerers of the Crimson Sun?”

“Everything must have some practical value, mustn’t it, Sonja?”

“Must it?”

“Of course. You know that as well as I. Reason is practical, dreams are practical—they must be, or we would let them die out of our nature. They lead us on to greater things. And so, you ask, what has my argument to do with real life? With our situation here? Listen to me, then. Bo-ugan’s intention is to-forestall the next slap. There is fear in the very air over this land, Red Sonja. Do you not feel it, like a giant hand about to smite?”

Iatos was cut short by a sudden commotion on the walls. Soldiers were gesturing and talking animatedly. Several of them came down and hurried across the square, disappearing in the direction of Bo-ugan’s hut. The people in the square, soldiers and woman and children, all immediately stopped their conversations or set down their bowls or cups and looked to the men on the walls. Some of the guards there gestured to those below.

Sonja stood up. “Mercenaries approaching,” she said aloud.

Iatos, too, rose up and watched Sonja who, forgetting him for the moment, left philosophy and speculation hanging and rushed to find out what was happening.

She would, in time, remember Iatos’s words, and wonder at them—ponder them, speculate upon them. But for now, she was still very young…

“Who are they?” she asked of a soldier standing at the foot of the wall.

“Northerners,” he answered. “That’s all we can tell for now. They’re about an hour off.”

“Many of them?”

“Enough, I’d say, to revitalize us, if Bo-ugan can buy them.”

“Summer’s more than half over,” Sonja reminded him. “They’ll need shelter and the promise of food for the winter.”

“Aye, aye. But if they’re stupid, they may try to take us—not now, but by another road. Then we’d have to fight them off and keep up the siege besides.”

That struck a spark in Sonja—from where she did not know, but the possibility somehow transformed itself into a tingle of excitement. To fight—to kill…She thought of that, and of Bo-ugan’s mad perseverance, and something tugged at the base of her brain, something that seemed to hang in the very air over the land…

“Mercenaries?” Iatos asked her, as he approached from across the square.

Sonja started. “Aye, about an hour off.” With Iatos’s interruption that tingling impression fled, to return later, as would Iatos’s philosophy.

But for now, there was only the tense wait for the mercenaries to appear at the gates of the village.

It was Ostor who led the mercenaries—a tawny-haired giant of a man dressed in heavy mail, wearing enough knives and swords on him to arm three lesser men, his face all scarred from countless battles.

Bo-ugan, knowing him of old, ordered the gates drawn open and allowed Ostor and a dozen of his retainers entrance. Then, as Bo-ugan and Ostor made their way to Bo-ugan’s house to talk of terms and agreements concerning the buying of swords, Ostor’s mercenaries dawdled in the square, the center of attention to all who collected.

But while Bo-ugan and the barbarian chief talked inside the headmen’s compound, Ostor’s men sauntered about as though they owned the town, nor did it take long for some of them to approach the prettiest young women there and make rude jests or promises. They eyed those few soldiers in the square; then defiantly, knowing that the villagers dared not take their actions too seriously, they bestowed insults freely, in the way that barbarian outsiders unused to any society but their own will do to assert themselves.

Sonja, standing off to one side and observing the ribald jests and silly attempts at intimidation, felt she knew these men—not their names, but their type. And she knew what would happen, for it always did. When one of the rogues spotted her, she sighed heavily and shook her head at the inevitable.

“Catch that one there,” growled a blond warrior to his companion, a short, stout man with a black beard.

“Man or woman?” wondered the stout one aloud.

“Surely that’s a woman under the armor,” said the blond man.

“I’m not so sure. We’d best inspect this.”

They made their way across the square towards Sonja, who stood, arms still folded across her chest, feet braced on the ground—a posture of apparent indifference.

Blond and stout came close to her and scratched their heads, looking at one another.

“Are you a woman?” asked the blond warrior.

“Or a swordsman?” asked the stout one.

“We’re trying to decide.”

“Yes, we’re trying to decide.”

“Either way, you’re welcome to ride with us.”

“Yes, either way we’d like to ride with you,” said the stout man. “I’m sure you’d ride well!”

His companion laughed roughly, as though it had been a great jest.

Sonja, eyes narrowing but not moving a muscle, said to them coldly, “I’m a woman. You can tell by my hips. See? Look at them, why don’t you?”

Sensing that she was not intimidated, both scowled at her.

“Yes, I’m a woman,” she went on. “Look at my hips. And look at that sword on my hip. Some sword, isn’t it? Matter of fact, it’s much more sword than either of you have got—or both of you together, for that matter.” They eyed her carefully. A jest, yes—but a jest uttered in a sneering, cold tone. From a woman…a woman warrior. Strange. A jest, but no laughter in her eyes…

“I think,” said the stout man to his blond friend, “that this woman is under the delusion that she can bluff—”

“No delusion,” Sonja interrupted him, “and no bluff. You ride in here and act like you’ve bought the place. But you haven’t. While you’re standing around waiting for your boss to come back and kick your asses back onto your horses, keep in mind that you’re guests here, all right? You’re guests, not pigs, so don’t think you have the right to—”

“Shut up!” the blond man yelled in a fit of temper.

“—to act like pigs.”

“Shut up, bitch!” blond-hair yelled again, gripping his sword hilt menacingly.

Still Sonja stood, arms across her chest, a hard glint in her sapphire eyes. “Pull that,” she said quietly, “and your boyfriend here is going to have quite a mess to clean up.”

“I don’t take that kind of talk from anyone, man or woman. Draw your sword!”

“Just turn around and walk away,” Sonja suggested. “You still have time.”

“I said, draw your sword!”

The entire square had fallen hushed, all eyes on the two of them. lire squat man had backed away—ready once for jests, but now uncertain about the temper and ability of this flame-haired warrior-woman. No sense putting his health on the line just because his companion had a hot temper and took things too seriously.

Sonja did not move.

“Draw your blade, woman,”—his hand tightened on his sword—“or I’ll run you through like a spitted fish!” Putting word to action, he began to draw his weapon clear—just as another sword, flicking out like a hard, gray serpent, whisked toward him and came to rest with its point steady at his crotch.

Sonja, still unmoving, watched.

The blond swordsman, pausing in his action, turned his head carefully and looked into the gaunt, cold face of Iatos.

“Keep your sword in its sheath,” Iatos said quickly, “and don’t commit suicide. She could mince up a dozen like you.”

“Iatos.” The blond man snarled; sweat was running down his cheeks. “You old queer. Still up to your old tricks?”

“Did you hear me? Shut up and leave while you—”

The blond warrior sneered. “I’m surprised you’ve lived so long, old queer. In my tribe, we stake out your kind on an anthill.” He straightened up and let his blade slip back, but still kept his hand on the pommel. “A queer and a woman,” he continued drily. “Quite a pair. Does it take two of you to—?”

“That’s enough, Stovis. I can cut you right now, or I can step back and let Sonja cut you up. Either way, you lose it all. The joke’s gone far enough, and it’s time for you to shut up until Ostor returns. Understand?”

Stovis, not liking it, yet stood still and said nothing.

“Ah, I see,” said Iatos. “You understand…” Slowly, carefully, he pulled back his blade.

A heartbeat passed…

In that instant, Stovis was sorely tempted to leap back, draw his sword and take on the old man and the woman—but he did not. As the crucial heartbeat passed, faces turned in another direction, and the moment of peril was past, for Bo-ugan and Ostor were returning down the path to the square.

They had seen what happened, but did not speak of it to one another. Such things happened between potential enemies, and sometimes between potential friends. Sonja gathered from their expressions that their parley had not been successful. Either Bo-ugan could not promise Ostor enough, or what Ostor could promise Bo-ugan had seemed more trouble than it was worth. At any rate, their quick return to the square from Bo-ugan’s hut was proof that no agreement had been reached.

Ostor mounted up and yelled for his retainers to do likewise. There was no grand gesture of parting between the two chieftains, simply an order from Ostor, and he and his men rode out. Within minutes of their exit, the dust of the galloping steeds of the mercenary army rose beyond the closed gates of the village, fading toward the far horizon.

Bo-ugan made his way with his men back to his hut. Sonja, standing free of the wall, looked down at the spot on die ground where, if events had gone differently for a moment or two, Stovis’s corpse might have lain. She said sadly to Iatos, “That—that is why I admire you.” Then she smiled at him, and headed for her barracks.

But she knew something must be done soon; the tension, the madness in the land was growing…

Daron was awake but lying in his cot, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling when Sonja came in. The Hyrkanian threw herself onto her own bed and matched Daron’s posture, thoughtfully bit her lower lip, then said to him out of the side of her mouth, “My friend, if you know some way to settle this so that I can squarely be on my way, I’d appreciate your letting me in on it.”

To her astonishment, Daron replied, “All right. I’ll do so.”

Sonja sat halfway up, rolling onto her side. “What?”

‘I’ll help.”

“You can help? I’d like to know what you—”

“I was up thinking about it all last night,” Daron said in that otherworldly tone of his. “I’ll do it. We’ll finish it for them.”

“Daron…”

He sat up on the side of his cot, pulled on his boots, then looked Sonja in the eyes and told her, “Let me wash up and get some food, all right? Then we’ll go to Bo-ugan.”

Without giving her a chance to ask any more questions, the strange young man rose and exited the barracks room.

But while Daron took his lunch in a small corner of the village where he sometimes sat away from the milling crowds of the main streets and the square, another commotion occurred at the guarding walls of Bo-ugan’s place. A horse in the distance—no, three horses. Three riders—no, two riders holding a third propped up between them.

“Alert Bo-ugan!” cried a guard. “Something is badly amiss here.”

The war chief arrived with his retinue just as the doors were being pulled open to receive the riders. The soldiers and others gathered there gasped and swore in anger and astonishment, but the riders silently and without emotion lifted down their comrade from his mount and laid him on the ground.

“Bring wine!” one of them yelled to the onlookers.

While the horses, winded and thirsty, were taken by boys to troughs nearby, one rider crouched beside the victim and wiped his sweating brow with a cloth. The other approached Bo-ugan, saluted and answered his master’s wordless questions.

“He hasn’t spoken coherently during the ride, my chief. He was wounded during a battle and left for dead. He babbles strangely. From the little we can gather from him, he was tortured by Thotas and the other sorcerers.

Bo-ugan’s steely eyes revealed only a shadowed hint of the anger that seethed within him. “Any chance of his living?”

“None.”

Bo-ugan went to the man, pausing as a woman gave a wineskin to the first rider. The wounded man coughed and spat as the wine was dripped down his throat, but it revived him for a moment. He tried to sit up, but could not. The wounds on his face and limbs, showing through his tattered clothing, began to run with blood as his exertions reopened them. He fell awkwardly to one side, off-balance because of the loss of his arm, and was propped up by the rider.

Daron was there in the group, watching. As he watched, Sonja came up beside him.

Bo-ugan bent to the man and said gently, “Did Thotas do this to you, lad?”

“Aye, my chief. They—tortured me. I would tell them nothing.”

“Rest. We will take you inside, and the women will nurse you.”

“My chief, I told them nothing. But the star…it feeds on pain and fear…Thotas owns the star, but it owns him now also. He is insane. He is…”

“Rest, rest, and the women will—”

The wretch fell back, exhausted, his blood dripping to the ground. Bo-ugan rose to his feet and ordered the soldiers to construct a litter and carry the man into his own house for care and rest. But even as the men began to tie shields together with leather straps to form a litter, the broken man shuddered, opened his eyes and mouth as if in horror at something only he could see, then fell back and went limp.

Women in the crowd began to weep and hurry their children back to their homes.

Bo-ugan stared at the corpse for a long moment. Then he turned and faced Agthor. Neither warrior said anything, but their eyes blazed. Then they turned from the face that evil had destroyed and made their way back to Bo-ugan’s house.

“The sorcerers have not done this for a long, long time,” one of the riders said fearfully, pointing to a rayed symbol burned into the dead man’s brow.

Sonja turned as she sensed someone close behind her. It was Iatos.

“It is true,” he whispered to her. “Some time ago the sorcerers were in the habit of returning mutilated corpses to us, with the sign of the Crimson Sun branded upon them as a rude warning. Sometimes they dumped them over the walls. Once they sent a whole pile of them flying through the air and dropped them in the middle of the plain. It was hideous.”

Sonja swallowed.

“Now it seems to be happening again,” he said quietly. “Death in battle is one thing, even for a mad cause. But this senseless torture…”

Soldiers were collecting about the corpse of the one-armed man; a number of them were enraged by the mutilation. Refused aid by the mercenaries this morning, this indication of their enemies’ inhumanity proved to be the final straw for the hotheaded and dangerous among them. One man raised his arms and called for the attention of the crowd. More and more soldiers collected around him.

“How long shall we put up with this foulness?” he yelled. “Look you—look at the death of your brother! And how many more die each day? How many will be tortured daily and nightly by these soulless madmen? Let us put an end to it, once and forever! Let us build an army so strong that no sorcery can stop us, and storm their redoubt in one overwhelming attack!”

Lusty cheers went up, and as the man continued to rant on and on, more men gathered about him. Sonja, Daron and Iatos turned their backs on the group and moved away.

Sonja said to Daron, “If you do have a plan—anything—we had best speak with Bo-ugan about it right now.”

“Aye,” he said, nodding. “Aye.” •

He walked on, lost in thought, while Sonja paused a moment with Iatos.

“I’ll let you know what happens,” she told him. “But we can’t let those idiots commit suicide with another general assault.”

“Of course not,” said Iatos. “Good luck to you and Daron.”

She slapped him on the shoulder, then hurried across the square to catch up to Daron and walk with him to Bo-ugan’s hut.

Chapter 3

Dark Roots

Bo-ugan was sitting in his dim hut with Agthor and a number of retainers. They were at table; wine was to hand, and the ever-present parchment map. Dishes of cold food were strewn about the tabletop.

One of Bo-ugan’s soldiers was playing with a knife—sitting in a chair and dropping the weapon point-first over and over into the wooden arm. Sonja read his mind easily.

Bo-ugan moved forward in his seat and lifted his cupped hands to his chin as Sonja and Daron entered. Their escort saluted the chieftain, then exited.

“Yes,” Bo-ugan said to Sonja. “Sit, please—both of you.”

She did so. Daron sat beside her, reached for a wine goblet, filled it and began to sip. He seemed nervous, and all in the room noticed it. That perturbed Sonja; such was not the way to approach the chieftain of the village if one had a strong plan in mind to turn the course of war.

“We spoke yesterday,” Sonja reminded Bo-ugan, “of a possible change in tactics.”

“Yes, yes,” Bo-ugan urged her.

“My friend Daron has such a plan. Or so he tells me.”

Bo-ugan eyed the young man. “What is your plan, Daron?”

Daron stared into his wine cup. “Less a plan,” he admitted, “than it is—a possibility.” He looked up into the headman’s steely eyes. “I cannot promise you success; but even to begin this task, I must ask for help from you. It is—many things at once, Bo-ugan. If I am correct, it will end your woes—and perhaps mine as well.” Bo-ugan scowled. “You’re not speaking plainly,” he told Daron. “Please tell me exactly what you have in mind.”

Daron straightened up in his chair, glanced at Sonja and the others in the room and placed his hands on the table. “I believe I know where I can find a weapon to destroy Thotas and his priests.”

Bo-ugan held his eagerness in check. “Tell me where. I will send an army after this secret.”

“I’m not certain where. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been reluctant to impart this idea.”

“Any chance of success now is worth the risk,” Bougan assured Daron.

“Is it?” he asked, staring at the chieftain. His query seemed to entail more, by its tone, than a simple strategy against enemy warriors.

Bo-ugan reached for the wine and offered more to Daron. Daron accepted. “Tell me more of this secret,” he urged. “I must know what I am risking.”

“You,” Daron said to him, “risk very little, expect for the temporary loss of two warriors—no, three—Sonja, myself and one other. We must journey from here, and I must follow clues to find this—secret. When we discover it, I will return to you with power to destroy the ziggurat.”

“Again,” Sonja broke in, “you speak in mysteries, Daron. Can you tell us more plainly—?”

“Please,” Daron returned, “I must ask that for now you respect my discretion.”

That took both Sonja and Bo-ugan aback.

“I am not playing some game,” Daron continued earnestly. “Though I am young, Lord Bo-ugan, I have traveled wide and far and have learned many things. There are secrets in my past which I hope to unravel. And as I unravel them, I may be able to aid you as well.”

“This deals with more than swords,” Bo-ugan said tensely.

“Aye, chieftain. Far more than swords.”

“Sorcery…”

“Much of that.”

Bo-ugan scowled. “I have hired sorcerers. They have won me precious little. No sorcery can best Thotas’s mastery.”

“You are wrong, I can assure you. But I may not tell you how I know. Will you respect that, Lord Bo-ugaq? Listen to me: You have indeed hired sorcerers, but only charlatans, weak psychics, mystics—those sorts. They gave you promises for their own gain. I do not speak of spells or visions. I speak of the same sort of sorcery that Thotas uses against you—a sorcery of power. If I am successful, I can destroy him.”

“Then you will have an army to back you,” Bo-ugan promised, “if you can convince me of the truth of what you say.”

“I will not need an army, Lord Bo-ugan. I desire only Red Sonja and one other to ride with me. That is, I assume Sonja will want to come on this quest…?”

“Absolutely,” she assured him.

“Then choose a soldier,” Bo-ugan said. “Take the strongest man of my ranks, one of die troops of my own retinue—”

“Ah, they would not serve me properly,” Daron said, “although perhaps in warfare they cannot be bested. I want, Bo-ugan, to take with me the idiot Urrim.” Bo-ugan’s eyebrows rose. “Surely you jest!”

“I do not jest. Your soldiers cannot be matched in swordplay, but swordplay is not as needed where I go as is Urrim. He is wounded and appears to be a fool, but he has a mind for all that—and when he uses it, he sometimes sees strange things. And though he speaks infrequently and awkwardly, he sometimes speaks of those things he sees. That is why I need him.”

“You mean,” Sonja asked Daron, “that Urrim’s wound to the head has somehow affected him so that he can understand what most people cannot?”

“Aye. It is true. I have spoken with him—have translated some of his garbled words.”

She thought back to her conversation with Iatos. “Surely there is some purpose to him. …”

“Forgive me for being blunt,” Bo-ugan said, “but I think less and less of this—plan—the more I hear of it.”

“Let Sonja and me, and Urrim, ride forth this day,” Daron insisted. “You will not miss us, with your many hundreds of warriors. And when we return—”

“And when might that be?”

“Perhaps a week. Perhaps a month. Surely no longer than a month.”

“Go, then,” said Bo-ugan. “Go, and do as you say. In the meantime, I will keep up the assault and accomplish what I can.”

Sonja said to him, “Which reminds me that a number of your troops are upset because of the corpse in the square. They’re working themselves up for an attack.”

“I’ll speak sense to them,” Bo-ugan promised her: As they left the chieftain’s hut, Sonja said to Daron, “That was a strange conversation. I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

“You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to, Sonja.”

“Oh, no!” She smiled. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily!”

“Then,” Daron said quietly, “I, too, hope that I know what I’m getting into…”

Urrim would not sit close to fire. The third night out, far to the west of the village, he camped as he had the first two nights: sitting far back from the campfire Sonja and Daron had made, watching them as they mastered the strange element, drooling like a puppy as the fowl they had caught roasted and sizzled over the flames.

His mind wandered. As the sunlight died out over the fields that were giving way to forestland, Urrim would cock his head at the evening bird calls and listen intently, as though he could comprehend them. He would scratch himself, study his fingers or hands intently, sometimes suck at his fingernails or try to catch the small bugs which he noticed crawling in the bark of the logupon which he was sitting.

This evening, as they ate, Sonja watched Urrim from time to time. After a swallow of wine, she said to Daron: “Will you tell me yet why you brought him along?”

Daron did not answer her directly; he seemed to mull over Sonja’s request.

“All right, then,” she prodded. “Will you tell me yet exactly what it is we’re looking for?”

“You sound suspicious.”

“I resent trusting you, now that I’ve agreed to help and you won’t even take me into your confidence.”

“I asked Bo-ugan to respect me enough to—”

“I’m not Bo-ugan. You and I have spent a lot of time on the road together, Daron. I trust you enough that I’m going along with this, and I believe you’re not leading me into any kind of trap, but sometimes I have to wonder if you really know what you’re doing. Consider this: the longer you hold off telling nie what we’re getting into, the slower my reactions might be if you need to rely on them. At any rate, I want to know. That’s just the way I’m made. You’d better convince me soon that this is necessary. I’ve been waiting for an explanation ever since we saddled up.”

Daron sighed deeply. “You’re right, Sonja. If I can’t trust you, I can’t really trust anyone, can I?”

“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment; I’m looking for a good reason for being here.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Do you know where we’re going, Daron?”

“Vaguely. I know we must go west. There’s a swampland two, maybe three more days ahead. It’s in there, in the swampland. Somewhere.”

“What? What are we looking for?”

“My father.”

“Your father!” Sonja’s brow creased. She sat forward, eyeing Daron carefully in the campfire light. “Your father’s dead.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Damn it, you told me—”

“I told you he wasn’t around anymore. Careful choice of words. I deceived you, and I apologize. But I really didn’t know then if I could trust you—or if I should.”

“Your father lives in a swamp? Why? Is he a criminal? What did he—?”

“Sonja.” Daron faced her. There was pain in his face. “My father is a sorcerer.”

For a long moment the only sound between them was that of animal grease hissing in the fire coals.

Cautiously then, “A sorcerer?”

“Aye. Do you—want to know the whole story?”

“If you want to tell it.”

“The story of my illegitimacy? My mother’s rape, my strange boyhood, my upbringing? My curse?”

“If you want to tell it, Daron,” Sonja said quietly. His stark words, limning that quality of desolation which marked him, struck deeply into the sympathy of the Hyrkanian. She, too, knew the curse of a dark, lonely and painful past…

“I want to tell it, yes. It burns in me. I need to tell it…to someone. Maybe you’ll understand parts of it, Sonja, or understand parts of me. You’re wise enough, in some ways. You’ve traveled the world.”

“Maybe I have parts of your hurt in me, too, Daron,” Sonja said softly; and perhaps she was thinking of the way lovers share pieces of their pasts.

Daron followed a wash of firelight as it played upon the curve of her cheek, the bridge of her nose, and hid the hollows of her eyes. “Maybe,” he replied. “Maybe…”

Night came down fully. Urrim fell asleep beside his log. As the cold blanketed them, Daron and Sonja built up their fire and moved closer to one another. And as they sat, sharing the fire and the night, the young man told the young woman what he was and how he had come to be—himself. The history of a life unlike other lives…

* * *

“So you haven’t seen your father since you were four or five?”

“No.” Daron’s voice was as low as the fire. As if to allow himself time to recuperate from the strange narrative he had told Sonja, he stood up and added more fuel to the dying flames, watching them grow and send up new smoke. Then he looked across at the idiot. Urrim was asleep. Daron studied him, and Sonja saw that an expression of something—melancholy? envy? mistrust? doubt?—passed across his features, then was gone with a flutter of new flames.

He turned to Sonja. “As I told you, my mother did not raise me, because she could not. I was adopted by the tribe; tolerated, but always an outsider. My father, when the tribe grew fearful of him because he had delved so deeply into his sorcerous studies, left one night and never returned. That was when the tribe turned against my mother and slew her for the crime of falling in love with so strange a man. They had feared to kill her when he was present. But I escaped the night after my father disappeared, and searched for him. That led to the years of wandering, and the witches I told you about, the wizards, and eventually the serving in army camps and the learning of swordplay. But never have I been able to forget my heritage, even though I’ve tried to bury it. Now, perhaps, I can at last turn it to something useful.”

“And all you have to lead you on are—dreams?”

“Yes. Dreams—if you want to call them that. More likely, I think, they are phantom visitations—an answer to my years of wondering and searching in my sleep. I am bom of a sorcerer. My father was not quite human, though he was human enough in appearance, and so I have occult powers. I am awkward with them, I can never count upon them, but I have felt them growing steadily within me since I left childhood. I am, Sonja, a sorcerer, and the son of a sorcerer. I lack only the wherewithal to learn my—trade?—and then to apply it. I am like a boy with artistic inclinations not yet given the brush or the clay on the wheel.”

Sonja was silent for quite some time. “I believe you, Daron,” she said finally.

The comment seemed curious to him. “Why would you not?” He sat down again on the log.

“I mean,” Sonja continued, “I believe you. Or believe in you. Or…” She looked at him, then looked away.

Daron did not need a sorcerer’s insight to grapple with what was happening. He stood up, went to the fire and kicked a few of the stouter limbs into the center of the flames. After a few moments, he walked to Sonja and pressed a hand to her hair.

She looked up at him; her lips trembled.

A short time later, as she curled up in her blankets by the fire and settled down to sleep, Sonja listened to the troubled, hushed breathing of Daron quieting down in the darkness just outside the fire, and she wondered. Then her eyes fell upon Urrim, who slept as soundly in his blanket as though in a cocoon. And she wondered what secret the wounded idiot kept. They all had secrets. It was a world of secrets, a world of dark swamps and sorcerers, swords and strange noises, temples and warriors—and more secrets still.

She fell asleep, wondering…

“This swamp seems more familiar to me somehow,” Daron announced the next morning as they ventured farther westward in the gray morning light.

“In what way, Daron?” Sonja asked.

“More akin to what I felt in my dreams. It feels like…a home…or the return to a familiar, desolate place.”

Urrim rode between them, and as Sonja regarded him, she reflected on a question she had asked Daron the previous night, which had become lost in their deeper talk: the reason for Urrim’s presence. She felt hesitant about mentioning it now, and did not, but she wondered.

The swamp that surrounded them, wet, gray and damp, seemed almost a living thing, so heavy was it with moisture and shadows and hanging tendrils that drooped from gnarled roots and branches. Moss clung so thickly to the trees that it seemed to muffle the stagnant atmosphere. Far away, constantly, they heard the furtive splashes and slithers of suddenly roused things, unseen but ubiquitous. The sun peered through only occasionally, breaking in to sparkle upon the sodden moss or the drooping verdure of the tall, dripping trees.

Their horses’ hooves sank in the mud of the path. Sonja tried to keep her mount as much as possible on the center of the trail. Memories of times passed in other swamps brought her senses to keen alertness, for she knew that swampland gives no one a second chance, and that a sudden misstep might condemn her or her mount to a slow, sinking death.

She noticed then that she was unconsciously following Daron’s lead. Where he guided his horse and Urrim’s, Sonja followed. This puzzled and irritated her, this instinct of hers to follow another’s lead. Still, her instincts had seldom proved wrong, and if they now told her to follow someone else’s…well, then, follow she would.

Which brought her mind back to Urrim and the question of his presence—and even at that very moment when she thought of him, the lad roused himself in his saddle and looked about in a startled fashion. Long silver threads of drool oozed down his chin and swung to his tunic; Sonja saw in his eyes something like the fear of an animal when danger is pressing close.

She glanced at Daron. He was not looking at the boy. Whatever prescience had upset Urrim, Daron was ignorant of it. In another heartbeat Urrim’s alertness was vindicated—and Sonja’s questioning of his presence with them was forgotten.

For Urrim uttered a squawk, and as he did so Daron whirled and looked at him, glanced at Sonja, then pulled back on his horse’s reins.

Sonja reacted likewise, instantly.

“There!” Daron nodded, reaching for his sword.

The things were dose upon them before Sonja was able to discern shadow from substance—so subtle were they, so nonhuman, so much a part of this foul terrain. A yellow-taloned hand struck out; Sonja’s horse whinnied and plunged, and she was forced to rein back hard to keep the animal from throwing her.

Swamp-devils—ghouls—undead corpses—whatever they were, they were only barely human in form; pale white where they weren’t covered with muck and slime; naked and horned, taloned and fanged, gnarled of limb.

Moving clumsily, staring with dead-white eyes, two of them jumped at Sonja’s mount. A third, dropping from a festoon of hanging moss, fell upon Daron and pulled him to the ground. Yelling, he struggled frantically and broke free of his attacker.

Sonja’s horse lurched in fear as the first of the things clawed at its head. Cursing, she leaned forward and slashed. Her flying blade caught the thing squarely on the neck, and sent the white, muddy head flying. Its arms pawed blindly in the air as the headless body staggered backwards. Sonja booted it in the chest and it splashed into a scummy pond.

She cursed again, marveling that the thing showed no blood.

The second was more wary, advancing in a crouch, yet obviously intent on attack. Sonja’s mount reared back and whirled for a sudden gallop as the swamp-thing lurched forward. Sonja screamed and threw herself to one side, dropping from her saddle.

- Urrim shrieked in terror as he, too, was thrown from his horse. He fell facedown in the muck. Lifting his head, he shrieked again to see a swamp-creature loping towards him. He tried to scramble away but only dug himself deeper into the mud.

Sonja dashed toward him, cursing the muck that held her own boots and slowed her. But her sword was her third arm, and the swamp creature was a feeble enemy if only she could avoid the sweep of its clutching paws.

She jumped at it. The thing pivoted; its wide, yellow-clawed hand groped in the damp air. Sonja’s steel caught it. The hand spun around on the end of the wrist, half-severed, flopping on a tough remnant of skin and muscle. Eerily undaunted, the creature hopped forward, its feet sending up a spray of mud. Sonja met it, sword out, and the mindless thing impaled itself, the point catching it below the breastbone. She lunged furiously, levering upward, putting all of her strength into the blow, then ripping back. The thing stumbled backward and lost its balance. Sonja swiped at it again, slashing its neck, and the thing dropped back into a green-slimed pool and sank, its limbs still churning. Within moments there were only brown bubbles on the broken surface and the last of some white toes sinking.

Gasping for breath, Sonja turned towards Urrim, who, she saw, was now safe and being tended to by Daron, who was wiping clean the lad’s face. Beyond Urrim, beneath a stout bole that had sunk its roots into a swamp pool, lay two halves of a nonhuman carcass, the fingers of one hand still twitching: Daron, too, had wielded his blade well.

The blood was yet throbbing in Sonja’s temples as she lowered her trembling sword to the ground and asked, “Are we to expect more of them, Daron?”

He looked up from Urrim. “I don’t know.”

“There could be many of them out there, waiting, watching us.”

“Doubtless.”

“Then tell me what we’re—!”

“I don’t know, Sonja!” he yelled angrily. Hot-tempered, she shot back, “Damn it, these are your swamps, Daron!”

“They’re not my swamps!”

“Then what do you—?”

She caught herself. Staring at Daron, seeing the pain and the anger and the recent bloodlust in him, Sonja realized where her own short temper derived from.

“I’m still remembering—hating,” she said more quietly.

“Yes. So am I.”

She frowned. “It was like fighting those corpses in the ziggurat.”

“Aye, aye. Like that. Not like an ordinary battle. Always an aura of hate in the air, making us take it all personally…”

She walked towards Daron and Urrim. “Is he all right?”

“I think so. Just frightened.”

“Well, he has a right to be frightened.”

Daron eyed Sonja. “Yes, he has that right.” In his eyes was the look of last night. *

Sonja caught it. She looked away, turned her attention to her muddied sword and whisked it through the air a few times so that droplets of muck fell from it. Then she wiped it along her boot and dropped it into her scabbard…

Their frightened horses had not run far; Sonja caught her horse and Urrim’s easily. Mounting up again, they rode on for a short while till they came to an area where the ground rose slightly and became earth again and no longer swamp, and the forest grew less dense. Presently Daron called a halt and dismounted once more, urging his companions to do the same. Then, to Sonja’s surprise, he began to gather dry twigs and soon had enough of them piled up for a small fire.

“Daron, what are you—?”

“I’m going back, Sonja,” Daron told her. “Will you stay with Urrim?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you watch him for a short while?”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“Back into the swamp. Not for long.”

“And leave me with three horses and this—with Urrim?”

“I won’t be gone long.” Then, anticipating one of her concerns, “Even if they’re watching, Sonja, they won’t attack again soon, because we have swords and we’ve killed three of them.”

“That doesn’t worry me as much as what you’re going to do in the swamp.”

“Perhaps I’m going to get us some better protection than simple swords.”

“Protection?”

“Just watch Urrim for a few moments, will you, Sonja?”

Not waiting for her response, he turned and moved off down the path they had just traveled.

Sonja walked over to Urrim. The lad sat quietly on the ground, and as she came close he looked up at her plaintively with innocent eyes. She looked into them, sensing something there—even as Urrim had sensed the things in the swamp, watching and waiting and finally attacking.

“What is it?” she whispered to Urrim, looking him in the eyes.

He only drooled and whimpered, gradually falling silent, as Sonja reached down, touched his hair, patted his head. “What, Urrim?” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “What? What is it in you?”

Far off, in a region of shadows and dull sunlight, something plopped into the water, leaving hollow echoes in the muggy air. There was no sound from Daron, wherever he was and for whatever reason he had hidden himself in the swamp.

True to his word, he returned shortly, cupping something in his hands.

Sonja had opened her saddlebag and was munching on some leaves and berries she had gathered that morning. She had offered some to Urrim, but the idiot seemed content to sit on the edge of some swamp water and watch the insects. Now, as Daron came back through the trees, Sonja swallowed the last of her berries, wiped her stained hands on her tunic, rose and walked towards him.

“What have you got there?”

Daron smiled at her cryptically, still holding his cupped hands close to his chest. “Find me a stone,” he said. “A flat one—thin, if possible.”

Sonja looked around, found one and gave it to Daron.

“Yes, that’s fine.” Hunching down by his pile of twigs, he deposited what he was carrying on the flat top of the rock.

Sonja watched. Roots and leaves; that’s all they were. They did not look familiar, but they were only roots and leaves. Daron lit a fire, then searched about for something more. He selected a small stone and proceeded to cut and mash the leaves and roots, then held them over the fire on the flat rock to dry.

“Breakfast?” Sonja asked him. “Lunch?”

Without looking up at her: “Magic.”

She pursed her lips. “Oh…”

Urrim grunted. Reacting as a mother might to a noise from its child, Sonja looked back at him. The lad sat as he had before, muttering to something in the swamp water—a frog or a serpent, perhaps. Sunlight broke through the tangled forest verdure, touching the boy’s head for a moment with a halo of glowing white. Insects buzzed loudly. Sonja looked again at Daron. He was scraping at the flat rock and now had a small pile of brownish-gray powder set off to one side. He worked quickly, as though practicing a profession he had been adept at for years, this grinding of roots into a powder…

“Sun’s high,” she commented briefly as the pile of powder grew larger.

Daron nodded. “We’ll be on our way soon.”

“Will you tell me what good this magic is?”

As he finished with the last of the roots and leaves, he said, “It might help us against these swamp-fiends.” He stood up at last and stretched his legs, sneezed and wiped his nose with thumb and finger, then pulled a small leather pouch from his belt and with his grinding stone carefully scraped the powder into the pouch. Then he tied it with cord and strung it to his belt. “It might help us against these swamp-fiends, that’s all,” he repeated, grinning at Sonja.

He threw the stone, then the flat rock, into the swamp; the splash disturbed Urrim, who moved from his perch and walked towards the two warriors.

“Ready to move on now, Sonja,” Daron commented.

She nodded and turned to the idiot. “Get on your horse, Urrim.”

But the lad only stood where he was and stared into the recesses of the swampland.

Sonja muttered, “Not again…“and her right hand lifted to her sword.

Daron glanced at her, watched Urrim—and then, beyond him, saw a flicker of white movement deep in the woodland.

“Another one! Another!” Urrim suddenly cried out. He ran towards Sonja, stumbled in the mud, pulled himself up and continued shrieking, “Another one! Don’t let them hurt me again! Don’t let them hurt me in the big building. Not in the big building!”

Sonja drew her sword, motioned to Urrim to get behind her and stay with the horses. The idiot obeyed and stood there, frightened out of his few wits, and watched—as did Sonja and Daron—the advance of a single, white swamp-dweller.

Long moments passed as that tall, gaunt and mud-splotched figure approached beneath the wavering mist of the high, hidden sun, splashing its way through the sucking ground.

Daron and Sonja glanced behind them several times to make sure that there were no others stealing upon them from other directions. Their eyes locked once, and Daron saw the anger in Sonja’s face, saw her arm muscles quiver as she gripped her sword.

He looked to the advancing intruder. Surprisingly, it was now holding up its hands in a gesture of peace.

Daron undid the leather pouch he had just strung to his belt, poured some of the powder into his right hand and replaced the pouch. Then he went ahead a few steps, saying to Sonja, “Let me speak with it.”

“Daron, to hell with that—”

“No. Let me speak with it. Trust me.” He stepped ahead to meet the advancing swamp-creature.

Sonja kept her hand on her sword. Behind her, Urrim was still blubbering, “Not another one…not another one…don’t let them hurt me again…”

Chapter 4

The Swamp of Souls

The creature was tall—as tall as Daron—and male. Malformed, yes, but not as grotesque as those which Sonja and Daron had slain earlier. And it could speak.

“Leave,” it told Daron in a hoarse voice, as if it were suffocating on the air of the swamp. “Go back, now. We do not want you here.”

“We’re here for a reason,” Daron replied, “and we won’t leave until we’re ready.”

Sonja glanced all around them to make sure that no other swamp-creatures were in the vicinity, although she guessed they must be hidden behind every shrub and tree. She walked ahead a few paces and saw the swamp-man’s white, dead eyes glance at her.

“I want to find Osylla,” said Daron.

The creature showed its teeth and lifted its filthy hands as though in a gesture of warding off some harm. “Go now, or we will—!”

“Take me to Osylla the witch,” said Daron again in a matter-of-fact tone, “or I will force you to do so.”

“No evil, no evil!” the creature insisted, waving its arms. “Go now, or we will hurt you! Go now, or—!”

Taking this as an invitation to action, Daron raised his right hand, opened his fist and flung his powder directly into the creature’s face.

The creature gasped as the cloud of dust enveloped its head. Daron fell back a few paces so as not to breathe 69 the powder himself. Then, as the swamp-thing stumbled about blindly, nearly falling to its knees, he moved ahead again and placed his right hand quickly upon the creature’s chest, directly over the heart.

“No, no!” cried the thing. It strove to grip Daron’s hand and pull it away—to no avail.

“I own you, now,” he whispered to the thing. “You must answer my questions. Your mind is not your own, and Osylla no longer owns you.”

The thing began to weep. “You have magicked me,” it said in a low voice, staring at Daron with tears coursing down its muddy cheeks. “Yes, yes, I must obey you.”

“Lead us to Osylla, then.”

More tears and protests—but the will of the deadly swamp-thing could not resist Daron’s strange powder. The young sorcerer faced Sonja, who had drawn near with her hand ready on her sword.

“Mount up,” he instructed her. “Help Urrim into his saddle.”

She did so, and led Daron’s horse to him. Daron pulled himself up.

“You have magicked me,” accused the swamp-thing again. “Magicked me…”

“Lead on,” Daron ordered it, “or I’ll slay you. You’re powerless.”

Whispering and rasping in its throat, the thing turned and walked slowly around the edge of the pond and into the darkness of the forest. Daron shook his head, for it was not the path he had intended to take.

Sonja moved her horse close to Daron’s as they slowly made their way.

“Osylla?”

“Aye.” He nodded to her. “A witch.”

“So I gathered.”

“An associate of my father’s.”

“I see.”

“I know only that she once lived in this swamp. If this creature leads us to her—”

He did not finish.

“We’ll find your father?” Sonja asked.

Daron only shrugged, then moved his eyes from Sonja to Urrim, who followed behind.

Sonja felt an uneasy gnawing in her vitals, though she did not know why…

It was an island in the midst of the swamp—a large island covered with trees and thick green fen moss, surrounded by a wide stretch of sluggish scummy river. Ahead of them the enchanted swamp-thing walked straight to the edge of the water, then turned to Daron.

“I can go no farther.”

“I understand,” Daron told it. “How do we cross?”

“There.” It pointed towards a gigantic oak tree, its massive roots sunk into the stagnant, fetid water. “Walk from this tree to the one like it on the island. Follow only this path. If you do not, you will fall into the water and die.”

Daron dismounted, noticing the large oak on the opposite bank. To the swamp-thing he said, “Thank you.”

It shook its head and began to back away into the swamp. “You will die,” it said in its gurgling voice. “Osylla will steal your heart and feed it to demons, or turn you into one like me…” Then it splashed away.

Urrim was fidgeting in his saddle. “I’m afraid,” he whispered.

Sonja grinned at him. “No need to be afraid now, lad. We’re out of the worst of it.”

“No. Nnnnh—” he answered her, swatting at insects that flew around his face. “More bad, more bad.”

Daron walked his horse ahead. It stepped gingerly off the riverbank into the water. Solid earth lay just beneath the surface of the opaque swampwater. Daron urged it across, keeping his eye on the oak at the opposite side.

Sonja watched him, then nudged Urrim. “Go ahead,” she told him.

“I’m frightened.”

“Go ahead. I’m with you, Urrim.”

He looked at her, and there was such a sudden upwelling of trust in his eyes that Sonja again felt a protective compassion for him. She swallowed. “Come, Urrim. We can’t lose sight of Daron in the mist.”

Sonja prodded her horse ahead, and Urrim followed. Carefully they made their way across the water, their mounts seeming to walk on the very surface of the lake.

At the opposite bank, Daron’s horse scrambled up a steep, muddy incline, and he called back to Sonja, “There is a hut—a building of some kind. In a clearing.” He hurried ahead. Sonja watched him, then prodded her own mount, proceeding slowly enough to allow Urrim to keep up.

“You all right, Urrim?”

“I…don* like water.”

“It’s strange, all right.” She sensed that anything could be lurking in the murky depths to either side.

“I like you,” Urrim told Sonja simply.

She smiled at him. “That’s good, because I like you, too, Urrim.”

“That…a house up there?”

“I think so.”

Urrim kept his horse close on the heels of Sonja’s. “What…who live there?”

“Osylla. Remember?”

“A witch,” Urrim said.

They had left the river and climbed the muddy bank. The hut, of timber and stone, sat in the center of the clearing. Urrim lifted his chin and seemed to sense something in the air.

“Witch is here.”

“How can you tell?” Sonja wondered out loud. “She’s here…”

“You don’t seem very afraid.”

His horse began to toss its head and fidget; Urrim was jostled in his saddle. Sonja reached over quickly to grab the reins. The boy leaned forward and cupped a hand over his mouth, whispering into the horse’s ear. Within a moment the mare was plodding along peacefully again.

Daron was standing beside his horse, looking back at Sonja and Urrim as they came on. Behind him, the door of the hut opened. Sonja nodded to Daron, her eyes warning him. He pivoted and, for the first time in his life, looked upon Osylla.

She was beautiful, which threw Daron off his guard. And she appeared to be quite young—no older than in her early twenties. She had flowing golden hair and brilliant green eyes. Her slim body was dressed in a vest of soft leather, loosely laced at the front to reveal cleavage, and a short skirt of rough wool slit at the sides. She wore deerhide slippers, but no ornaments of any sort. All this surprised Daron. He had fully expected to find some haggard crone, hideous and dressed like a savage, living in this wild swamp.

Sonja hated Osylla on sight—not because the woman was beautiful, or even because Daron had claimed she was a witch, but simply on instinct. She immediately sensed an ancientness about the woman, despite her apparent youth, and a willful energy that was power, restricted yet elemental, defensive yet menacing. Near Osylla the atmosphere seemed charged with some kind of invisible energy. And as Sonja sensed it, so did Urrim.

The boy remained on his horse for a moment after Sonja dismounted. Then, slowly, as if fearing that the earth below him might suddenly be transformed into a bed of serpents, he got down from his saddle, keeping a close eye on the witch.

Osylla did not move from her doorway. Daron advanced a step or two, paused and studied her, then spoke. “I am looking for my father. My name is Daron.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Osylla said to him, and smiled. Her voice was rich and husky.

“My father is Odurac, the sorcerer…”

“Of course. Yes, I sensed your coming.”

“I must find him, Osylla. I need your help.”

“Of course you do. But Odurac is dead.”

Daron froze. Sonja, beside him, saw him sway for a moment in shock. Then he blurted out in a hurt, tense voice, “Dead? No, he can’t be…You’re lying! You must be lying!”

Osylla’s crystalline laughter echoed across the swamp, light and lilting, and then her taunting smile settled on Daron and she said, “Yes, perhaps I’m lying. Perhaps Odurac still lives.”

Sonja sneered; the woman obviously enjoyed tormenting her victims. Beside her, Urrim began grunting and coughing. Sonja placed a hand on his arm, cautioning and calming him.

“Why do you lie?” Daron demanded, his fingers clenching at his sides. He moved forward, furious but uncertain, nervous yet menacing.

Osylla shook her head and pouted briefly, then smiled again. Her green eyes sparkled as if with bright good humor. “Come inside, Daron. Your father is not dead. I lied—or, perhaps I lie now! Forgive my whims, and come inside.” She glanced at Sonja and Urrim. “These are friends of yours?”

“Aye, good friends, witch.” His voice was firm and level now. “Can I trust you with them?”

Again the laughter. “Oh, enter, enter!” she urged them, as if rebuking Daron’s doubt. “All of you—come in. I know your journey. Forget my little joke. Odurac lives, Daron. You are his son. There’s no denying it—those eyes and the chin…”

The hut was as rude inside as out. A wooden table, a few chairs, candles here and there, a straw bed, some rough clothes—that was all, save for the cooking utensils at the fireplace in one wall. A few books and scrolls lay about, and in one corner loomed a large, iron-bound chest. It was a simple hermit’s abode.

Or appeared to be. Sonja felt on edge, standing there with Daron and Urrim. Her eyes roamed about even while she listened to the witch’s talk, alert for any hint of sound or movement that might betray a trap.

Urrim, too, was obviously uncomfortable; but whereas Sonja began walking slowly around the hut, glancing here and there and inspecting such mundane things as wooden spoons and writing brushes, the boy sat on the floor beside the table, drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them and watched keenly as Daron and Osylla conversed.

“Your father is evil,” Osylla was saying to Daron. “Yes, he still lives, but he might as well be dead for all the worldly contact he has. So you see, I did not entirely lie. Odurac has set a formidable task for himself. The last I heard, he was trying to contact the Outer Things. From time to time I have opened my mirrors and tried to search out his spirit, but its energy is so well protected that even my devices cannot find him out—which is no doubt as he wishes it to be.”

“Nevertheless, I must find him.”

“You have some of his talent, I’m sure,” Osylla purred, smiling at the young man. “Don’t you, Daron?”

“I must find him for reasons of my own,” he replied, avoiding her eyes.

“Hmmm, yes,” Osylla continued, on her own track of thought. “That talent would come in handy for you, wouldn’t it?”

“You must help me find him,” Daron said firmly. “Must I?”

“You can be bought, I know. Or convinced. Or forced.”

“By you?” Osylla asked him, no trace of humor in her now. “By this idiot-lad, and by a woman in man’s armor?”

Sonja, standing behind the witch, looked up from a piece of symbol-covered fabric she had been inspecting. Osylla turned abruptly, feeling the intensity of the Hyrkanian’s gaze.

“Red Sonja, was it?”

“That’s right.”

“An…interesting name.”

“I’m an interesting person.”

Osylla’s grin slowly faded. “So am I. So am I.”

An image played through Sonja’s mind—the instantaneous flash of herself ripping free her sword, beheading Osylla and having done with this masquerade…But Osylla turned from her, returned her attention to Daron and Sonja was left tightly clenching the woolen fabric she held in her hand.

“You must tell me, Daron, why it is so important that you find your father.” Osylla indicated her table. “Please, sit down. Will you have wine?”

“None, thanks.”

“Red Sonja?”

Sonja dropped the cloth, eyeing Osylla evenly. “No.” But she came forward, crossing the hut and seating herself beside Daron, opposite Osylla. Urrim, perched beside the fireplace, watched intently, and seemed to listen with exceeding interest to the conversation.

Osylla spread her hands upon the table, inspected her tapering fingers and long nails for a moment, then looked Daron directly in the eyes. “Tell me, then, why must you find your father?”

Daron somehow knew that even though he might not be able to trust this woman entirely, he was forced to do so partially—trust her with his mission, with parts of his knowledge and wisdom. His sword seemed a very weak weapon at this moment, as did his pride and his sense of himself.

So he told her briefly of the battle some days to the east beyond the swamp—of the villagers who for ten years had been warring with sorcerers housed in a ziggurat close against a mountainside. He told her of Thotas, the mysterious elder who was Master of the Order of the Crimson Sun, and his connection with the star fallen from the sky, and how the coming of that star had led to the entrenched battle between the villagers and sorcerers, causing hatred and death and ruination to spread upon the land. He mentioned his own wandering years and how, by chance, he and Red Sonja had become companions of the road—how, for want of food and coin, they had decided to join up with these warring villagers for a time—and how the villagers’ desperation had been the catalyst which had finally caused Daron to act on something about which he had vacillated for years: the ultimate search for his wizard-father.

Sonja kept a keen eye on Osylla all during Daron’s narration, never once speaking or otherwise interrupting. She noted that Osylla’s features changed subtly as Daron spoke. The witch seemed to have dropped her irritating facade of malicious frivolity; she listened to Daron with complete attention and, it almost seemed, understanding. When Daron had finished and the last echo of his voice had died in the room, Osylla spoke in a low, whispering tone with a touch of dread and even fatalism in it.

“Yes, of course! Of course you are tied in with the star! Why else should you feel compelled to find your father, were it not for this star which is driving all the land mad?”

Sonja leaned forward. “What do you mean, witch?”

Despite the Hyrkanian’s tone, Osylla took no offense but merely elaborated to Daron, “When the star fell a decade ago, many of us involved in the transmundane arts knew it for a sign. We sent forth spirits and attempted communications with it, to discover its reason for being here and its message. Yes, we knew that it had fallen into Thotas’s hands. One reason why Thotas and his Order have bothered little with these men who do them battle is that they have been fighting much sterner battles with others—sorcerers, wizards, witches—who by many means have sought to steal power from Thotas or learn the secret of his star. But more, the main energies of this star are being diverted by Thotas to some vast enterprise the nature of which we cannot determine. This thing from the heavens, whatever it is, whatever its purposes, has sent shock waves through all of us who are—sensitive—and is slowly draining life and sanity from all life in the region. Moreover, we adepts can feel when we dip into our probing forces what it is gradually doing to Thotas himself. He was a powerful and learned man, long dedicated to the dark path of power and knowledge, but possession of this thing is driving him utterly mad.”

“We must destroy him,” Daron said earnestly, “and the star!”

“Destroy Thotas?” Osylla laughed darkly. “Yes…certainly. Somehow. But the star? We know not even what it is, or whether humans can understand its nature.”

Sonja interjected. “Must it have a nature we can understand?”

Osylla’s eyes opened wide. She stared at Sonja and smiled grimly, then reflected?loud, “Ah, and I thought you only a she-cat with a sword. You have no gifts in you, heh? Do you know that for certain?”

“What are you talking about?” Sonja asked irritably.

Osylla’s grin vanished slowly. “Perhaps,” she said, “it’s just the she-cat in you, after all—putting its paw to the right place by chance.”

Daron, however, was anxious and impatient. “I’ve told you why we’re here,” he reminded Osylla, “and I’ve deliberately sought you out because I felt you could help me find my father.”

“Perhaps I can, Daron.”

“Begin, then! Please, Osylla, set me upon a path, give me some clue, or—”

The witch held up a hand. “It can be done. I have searched your father out before, though never have I dared to interfere with him. I am not one to idly search out means of supernatural suicide. To find him will take powerful magic.”

“You’re powerful,” Daron reminded her. “And I am powerful.”

“I believe that. Still, we must have a tool.”

She said that, and the room fell quiet.

After a hushed moment, Daron replied: “A tool.”

“Aye…”

Sonja began to feel edgy; they were losing her somewhere. Then she caught Osylla’s eyes moving, darting from Daron’s to Urrim’s, then back.

“I…thought as much,” Daron said quietly.

Sonja jumped to her feet. “Wait a minute,” she growled, her hand falling lightly to her sword. “What kind of tool?”

Osylla and Daron both looked up at her, but neither spoke.

Sonja noisily kicked back her chair, walked to Urrim and told him to stand up. Daron turned in his seat. “Sonja!”

Ignoring him, she said to the boy, “Go outside and see about our horses, will you, Urrim?”

He grunted, looking her in the eyes. “They hungry?”

“They might be, Urrim.” She touched his hair. “Just check on them. I don’t quite trust our—horses—around here. All right?”

He lowered his head, and murmured something. He shuffled towards the door, opened it, went out and pulled it closed behind him.

Sonja turned in the dimly lit room and faced Osylla and Daron. “Now, once again,” she growled. “What ’tool’?”

Daron looked away from her, wiping his hands. “Don’t be foolish, Sonja. The lad is no good to anyone, not even himself. This way—”

“He’s alive!” Sonja spat out. “Were it you, Daron, smacked in the head by a bolt, would you want your soul damned by some witch’s magic for—?”

“His soul will be safe, Red Sonja!” Osylla cried, rising, her face defiant.

Sonja’s blue eyes narrowed, and she sneered. “Oh? And that army of damned souls out there in the swamp—is that your idea of safe souls, witch?”

Osylla whitened. “Those are different. You don’t understand the order of things.”

“Spare me, please! I understand enough. Daron, you—disgust me, bringing this innocent boy along for the purpose of damning his soul.”

“His soul won’t be damned!” Daron insisted vehemently, pushing back his chair and standing up, his fists shaking at his sides. “He won’t be! He’ll be freed! He should have died in that battle, but he didn’t, and now I have no choice but to—”

“You make me sick!”

“An army can’t get at my father!” Daron yelled out. “Yet, one small life—and a deformed one at that, given up to the Greater Powers—”

“I’ve slain men in battle,” Sonja reminded him coldly, “aye, and women too. And I’ve seen brutes of soldiers maim and slay children and babes in the slaughter of war, and that sickened me. And few who’ve drawn blade against me have lived to speak of it. I’ve seen a lot of death and sorcery, Daron, but I won’t stand by while you yoke this idiot-boy to some demon’s hell, just because Bo-ugan’s people are unable to scale a fortress.”

“Bo-ugan has very little to do with this, Sonja.”

“Aye. And now all else appears to mean little to the bastard son of a sorcerer claiming his birthright from some hell-damned spawn!”

Daron kicked away his chair with a howl of anger. His hand flew to his sword, a heartbeat away from pulling it free.

“Draw it, Daron!” Sonja screamed at him. “Draw it, son of a wizard, and no sorcery on earth will spare you from my blade!”

But then he moved no more—found he could not. He looked into the Hyrkanian’s fiery blue eyes, and he remembered…remembered…and two parts of him were in utter warfare…He remembered, and he yet hoped—for two things…

“I…I cannot,” he whispered bitterly, and tears came to his eyes. “I cannot draw sword against you, Sonja.”

She looked at him and flushed. “Sorcerer’s son!”

“Gods of Acheron!” Daron swore in anguish. “Look at it from where I stand, can’t you, Sonja? What if there were one last hope that your father was still alive—somewhere, out there—one hope? Would the price matter?”

She stared at him, saw the tears in his eyes and swallowed thickly, feeling her own heart beating in her breast. His words had stung her to the quick. “Damn you,” she muttered sadly, almost to herself. “Damn you for a sorcerer’s son.”

She glanced at Osylla, who had watched them in silence, then turned quickly on her heel, pulled open the door, went out and slammed it behind her.

Daron smashed his fists down on the table, then gripped the edge and stood rigidly with feet planted on the floor. He trembled as he stood there, gritting his teeth and fighting back tears.

“Webs of hell!” Osylla said quietly, wonderingly. “You love her, Daron. You love her, don’t you?”

“Aye,” he grunted, holding back a sob. “Aye…I do.”.

“Aye…And she loves you.”

He stared at her, his eyes wet. Osylla met his gaze. “Does she? Ah, does she?” he whispered.

Outside, Urrim was nowhere near the horses. Sonja spied him sitting at the edge of the clearing, beside a tree. It was twilight. All around them the dense swamp-forest was filling up with mist, and with the orange glow of sunset.

Sonja walked slowly to Urrim, knowing what she felt but uncertain how to convey it—or whether she should. If Daron was trapped between vipers and flames, so was Sonja, and just as intensely.

Urrim looked up as she approached. He was playing with pebbles in the mud. There was grime all over his creased pants and worn boots, dirt all over his hands.

Sonja looked into the swamp. T could kill him now…betray him, but put him out of his misery…and cheat those bastards…’

“How are the horses, Urrim?”

He shrugged indifferently. “They—all right. I did not—need do nothing…”

Sonja said to him, “They—Daron and the witch—want to free your spirit, Urrim,”

He lifted his hands, but did not seem to understand. “Damn it,” she said, “they want to slay you, Urrim. Don’t you understand? They need you so they can fight the thing that harmed you. That star. Those men in the temple—in the big room.”

Tears formed in his eyes.

“Urrim—do you understand? They want to slay you, but they want to do it so that they can—”

Gods! Mitra! What was she saying? Did she really believe this? Was this she, herself, speaking? Or was she somehow being controlled by Osylia and Daron? Mitra, Mitra, this was hellish!

‘I could kill him now and cheat those bastards…’

“No!” she gasped aloud. “Urrim—look at me. You don’t want them to slay you, do you? Tell me you don’t, and by the gods I won’t let them!”

Urrim grunted. His eyes widened suddenly, and something happened to him—he seemed to rouse himself, like a child from a long sleep, or an invalid from his illness.

At the same moment, from some distant location in the swamp, a blue glow appeared. Sonja saw it instantly, the sight and the sense of it clutching her heart like an icy hand. She stared into the swampy wood, and very swiftly the blue glow filled the air. She gasped. Astonishment, and even a trace of fear, filled her—for it was the same blue glow, ethereal and unearthly, that had visited her that night, years and years ago, when as a girl she had seen her family slaughtered and had herself been raped and left to die in the burning hut by mercenaries—

The same blue glow.

From Urrim’s lips, clearly and almost mechanically, came, “I understand, Sonja. Trust me, I understand what is happening—and all that has happened until now.”

“Urrim? What…?”

Still that blue glow hung over the swamp, and increased, so that it filled the atmosphere around them. Distantly, in the core of this radiance, appeared the image of that man-woman thing, that god, or goddess, or fate, which years ago had shaped Sonja’s destiny, or made her aware of it. It did not speak, but Urrim did—while Sonja, listening in astonishment, wondered what had caused the world to tip itself inside out again.

“Yes, I understand about the ziggurat, and this swamp-witch, and all of it. You must let them free me from this life form, Sonja. For, listen: we are all merely fragments of the Great Completeness—you and I, this witch, even mad Thotas with his dreams of supreme power and world domination. Aye, and even this star is some part of the Great Completeness. So, do not fear for me. I am—”

“Urrim, this is madness—utter madness! They are performing some trick!”

But even as she said it, she was drawn again, staring, towards that glowing figure, her destiny, far away in the center of the swamp, and yet nearby…

“I am myself, Sonja, and always have been. Trust me. They offer my life only for a short time to the Outer Things. There is no wickedness in allowing them to use this husk for their purpose, for it is a magic which will liberate me, and one which will aid you and them in a good cause. Trust Daron, Sonja. He is not evil.”

The blue glow began to fade. The figure in the distance faded also, taking the hazy blue glow with it; it ebbed away, and coiling white mists replaced it—the miasma of the swamp.

“What—what are you?” Sonja cried out. “Are you a god, or—myself? Appear again, in Mitra’s name!”

But Urrim was drooling again, the blue radiance having disappeared, and Sonja was left standing, dizzy and uncertain, as though awakening from some hallucination.

“Urrim!”

“I did not…horses—all right, Sonja…”

The sounds of footsteps behind her brought her about instantly. She drew her sword and held it by her side, naked and gray in the dim light of the swamp.

Daron and Osylla approached, Daron carrying a torch.

“What wizardry was that, then?” Sonja growled at them.

Osylla seemed puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Witch, you know exactly what I mean! Urrim speaking! And that—that glow in the woods!”

Osylla’s brow knit. “Sonja, if something happened out here, I have no idea—”

“A lie! You lie, witch!” Her sword quivered in her hand.

Daron spat out, “Sonja! What are you talking about?”

‘I’ll ask you, Daron. And answer me true or, I swear by Erlik’s jaws, I’ll run you through! Did you and Osylla just work some witchery in that hut and make Urrim appear to speak and some blue glow appear from the wood?”

For a long moment Daron stared into her face. Quietly, his words for her only, he said, “No, Sonja. Believe it or not, we worked no magic against you, or against Urrim.”

Looking into his eyes, she had no choice but to believe him.

Daron pressed her. “What happened out here? Tell us.”

“Never mind.” She sheathed her sword. Despite what she had just seen and heard, she spoke with difficulty. “Have you come to do the deed?”

“In the swamp,” Osylla told her. “I have a place farther on, in the swamp.”

“Of course,” Sonja allowed grimly. “With the rest of the—vermin.”

Both of them ignored that comment. Osylla held out a hand. “Urrim?”

The boy arose and went to her, took her hand. Sonja looked him in the eyes. His met hers, and for a brief moment—or was it illusion?—she thought she recognized the same intelligence within him that had revealed itself a few minutes before.

Then, leading Urrim, Osylla moved toward the swamp, Daron walking ahead of her with the torch.

“I’m going with you,” Sonja told them, depositing her blade with a clank into its scabbard.

“I think you would rather not,” said Osylla.

“I’m going with you, witch.” Her eyes flashed to Daron. “I’m part of this, damn it, and I’ve seen and fought enough sorcery to understand what I’m getting into! Your secrets, witch, will have to be very secret if I don’t learn them.”

Osylla eyed her with disdain; but Daron observed, “She is right, Osylla. It is true. Her soul is stronger than most of those who practice our arts. Let her come.”

“So, then.” Osylla smiled wickedly. “Perhaps there is more to her than blade and flaming hair, eh? Very well, then—come, Red Sonja.”

Daron led the way, the torch melting a path through the swirling, thick mists of the darkened swamp as they sloshed ahead.

Chapter 5

The Sorcerer’s Son

The moon was high when they reached Osylla’s place of magic. Three trees marked the spot—gnarled, ancient trees which rose gigantically to the sky, their tough bark shimmering like damp hide in the silver moonlight, the moss-hung limbs and branches reaching for the clouds like taloned fingers clutching the entrails of a sacrifice. Their huge roots reared up from the soggy ground and enclosed an area as long as the arms’-reach of two tall men, and as wide. Upon this bed of roots had been placed a great flat disk of stone, as thick as the length of an arm and deeply carved with runes and sigils. Around this rough altar all other life in the swamp seemed to hold back; the surrounding shrubs and trees were stunted and seemed to twist away from the stone circle. The putrescent waters of the vast swamp did not come here, and only the moonlight reached down through those writhing branches to touch the runes and glyphs with silver.

“Here,” was all Osylla said, lifting her hand.

Urrim moved ahead of her. As though following unspoken instructions, he stepped atop the great stone disk and lay down on his back, spreading his arms and legs, and stared up into the funnel of moonlight. A low wind began to move through the clearing—a dank wind, hushed and stagnant, like fumes from hell.

Sonja watched uneasily, beginning to feel the itch and crawl of honest human dread in this atmosphere of the unearthly. Daron sensed her apprehension. Moving a step or two closer to her, he whispered, “I pray you, Sonja, do not interfere, no matter how horrified you might become.”

“Horrified? I doubt it,” she said sadly. “Disgusted—yes.”

. Osylla turned and lifted a hand to Daron; he handed her the torch. Holding high the burning brand, the witch advanced toward the supine Urrim. She did not look at him; her head was tilted back and her eyes stared skyward, towards the great moon. The growing breeze blew upon the torch and whipped sparks into the air which weirdly lit the swamp.

Urrim groaned.

Osylla ignored him. Holding high her torch, she spread her legs wide, lifted up her other arm as in invocation, and called out in a strident voice words that Sonja could not comprehend.

“Doth-Abru! E sokassa ne teh hoheles Doth-Abru! Sei karamas hoheles, Doth-Abru! Doth-Abru keles! Thodbura!”

“What the hell is she saying?” Sonja whispered to Daron.

“She is calling down—” He stopped short because of the scene which suddenly erupted before them.

Sonja,’ who had known sorcerers to spend long days and weeks in vigilance and preparation for certain arcane rites, was astonished at the rapidity of Osylla’s magic. For, as the last foreign syllables fell from the witch’s lips, the torch in her hand suddenly took on a life of its own, erupting into a geyser of flame that shot up toward the moon in a long trail of burning orange. It hovered there in the sky, a column of red and yellow in the moonlight, hissing softly, spinning and ever lengthening, then spiraling downward towards the spread-eagled Urrim.

Osylla shrieked a few more incomprehensible syllables.

The swamp wind rose up into a great gust that whipped Sonja’s hair and made her shift her feet to stay upright. The column of fire hanging in the air blew with the wind. It expanded suddenly into a globe, and then a mask, revealing itself briefly as the visage of some monster or demon, a laughing monstrosity with burning cavities for eyes, a gaping mouth that shot sparks and flames from a fierce tongue.

“Doth-Abru! Doth-Abru!”

Daron sucked in a breath. He was standing stiffly beside Sonja, and she felt him shudder. “The demon,” he breathed, barely audible. “The demon of the swamp—”

Then the mask, the visage of flame, vanished. The spiraling flame reappeared, and in a moment it stretched downward, fanning out and lengthening, pouring itself upon the round stone altar and the victim. Urrim shrieked in mortal terror and tried to move away, but it was too late. There was a last, mercifully muffled sound from him, and the light was so brilliant that Sonja had to avert her gaze.

When she looked back, the last of Urrim’s charred corpse was writhing and pulling in upon itself, crawling together as though still imbued with life. The flaked, burned skin sloughed away as would tender bits of burnt parchment, leaving only a complexity of brownish-white bones in the center of the disklike altar.

The melted bones continued to smoke and run together until they formed a lump the size of a fist. Smoldering, the melted mass settled and grew still; then it began to glow, brighter and brighter. Sonja gasped. A blaze of multicolored light streamed from the jewellike object that now lay upon the altar.

Osylla threw away the torch, and it hissed as it fell into a distant patch of swamp water. She walked through the dying wind and stepped upon the altar stone, reached down to the large jewellike thing, touched it, picked it up. Then she turned and stepped down again and brought it to Daron. Shadows fled farther into the swamp before the jewel’s glorious light.

There was a look of pain and regret on Daron’s face as the Witch offered him the thing.

“I—I had no idea…

“You wished to find your father,” Osylla told him. “You knew a human sacrifice was essential. You did not know in what form the gods might give their instructions. Neither did I know. Take this.”

She continued to hold it out to him. Moments were measured in long heartbeats. Sonja watched the grim expression on Daron’s face, and the coldly cynical face of Osylla. Again she wished to slay the witch where she stood. And again, in the moment before Sonja might react to her feelings and draw her sword, action distracted her, and Daron reached for the shining jewel.

“Use it as an amulet,” Osylla told him. “It will lead you to your father.”

Daron swallowed thickly. “But—how will I know?”

“You are the son of a sorcerer. It will lead you to Odurac. Depend upon it.”

She moved past him then, and walked away into the swamp, in the direction from which they had come.

Sonja growled and reached for her sword and half-drew it, staring after Osylla’s retreating back.

Daron turned to look after her. He said nothing. The expression in his eyes squelched Sonja’s anger. Daron’s eyes were filled with torment…with fear…and with wonder. But his fingers closed upon the gloriously shining jewel. Its light showed tears running down his cheeks.

They followed Osylla back through the swamp to her hut, not walking with her but keeping her in sight so that they would not lose their way. Neither Sonja nor Daron said one word to the other during the remainder of the night.

It was dawn when they returned to their horses and mounted. Osylla watched them, standing in the door of her hut. She offered them breakfast.

Sonja laughed at her.

Daron, still obviously shaken, walked his horse toward Osylla and asked her grimly, “And what payment do I owe you for this, witch?”

“Payment?”

“Surely this is no courtesy.”

She smiled serenely. “I know you. I knew your father. You have paid me already, Daron, by stepping into my house with your need. Your soul will return to me for safekeeping on the day of your death, and then you will repay me, Daron…You will repay me…”

In the stillness of the swamp, in the humid warmth of the dawnlit forest, a chill came upon Daron and settled within him. He asked, “Am I cursed, then?”

“You are a sorcerer’s son who came asking aid of a witch and the Elder Things,” Osylla replied, staring up into his face. “Live and gain knowledge, Daron kos Odurac.”

“Damn you…” The words fell from his lips with the weight of iron or stone. He might have raised his fist, or pulled his blade, or reared back his horse to trample the witch—but he did not.

Instead, with Osylla’s dark smile still in his eyes, Daron turned his horse about and headed away from her hut, the shining amulet hidden in his tunic.

Without a backward glance, Sonja prodded her horse and rode by him, holding Urrim’s former mount in tow. As they rode, she took notice of certain markings and objects in the landscape, so that she might know her way.

By midday they had reached an unknown area of the swamp and were heading generally northwestward, in a direction chosen by Daron—or chosen for him by the amulet, for he had simply let his horse wander where it would, and it had led them this far. Huge trees, scabby brush, thick scummy water and stinking vegetation crowded about them. The sunlight was gray and dim.

They tethered their horses, then propped themselves on rocks in the middle of an upswell in the earth and ate the old bread and fruit they carried in their saddlebags. Sonja chewed slowly, swallowed carefully, staring straight ahead of her, her thoughts her own.

Her silence began to get on Daron’s nerves. “Do you—do you hate me now, Sonja?”

She answered thinly. “No. I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you, Daron.”

“I suspected that she might need to…That’s why I brought him. Perhaps it was wrong.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Daron. I only hope you can live with the fate you gave Urrim. And I hope the same for myself, also.”

He looked at her, wondering.

Sonja sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out what I’m doing in the middle of all this. I have no business being here.”

“Sonja…”

“It’s the truth!” she countered. She was depressed, tired, upset. “What do I care about you or your father? Or Urrim, for that matter? And what is it to me whether Bo-ugan and his idiot villagers win against the priests of the Crimson Sun or not?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t!” She faced him, and there was fire and determination in her sapphire eyes. “I’ve ridden more roads than most ever do, fought more fights than most people survive, been in every devil-cursed climate and pestilential hellhole the gods in their madness have made. And for what? For what, Daron?”

“Look, I know all this is eating at you—”

“Shut up, Daron! Just shut up and leave me alone for a while, all right?”

He looked at her.

“I’m in the middle of all this,” she went on, “and I can’t figure out why. Erlik’s hells! In the middle of some blight-cursed swamp with a sorcerer’s son—with a mad witch behind us, and a temple full of hell-worshippers back there…In Mitra’s name, what am I doing?”

“Sonja…”

“Just leave me alone and let me think for a while, Daron.”

Then his tone changed. “Sonja…” He stood up quickly, drawing his blade.

Sonja regarded him sharply, looked in the direction he was looking, and instantly was on her feet beside him, whipping her sword out with the speed of a lashing cat.

Shadows in the swamp—walking shadows, betraying talons and eyes and teeth…

The horses began to whinny and pull against their tether. Sonja talked to them as she stepped down from the rocks and approached the swamp, feeling her boots press into soggy ground. She cast a quick glance behind her, saw no lurking shadows and heard no furtive noises to the rear, and so advanced some more, slowly, appraising the movements of the things. There were six of them—no, a seventh appeared from behind a tree.

“Sonja!”

She whirled. Daron had dropped his sword, was clutching his belly in pain, both hands fumbling with his tunic.

“What is it, Daron?”

“The jewel. It’s hot!” But within a moment he was calming down again; he let go of his belly, retrieved his sword, and ran down beside her.

“What was that?” Sonja demanded angrily.

“That—jewel. The amulet. It was burning hot for a moment. But I felt something else…”

“Felt what?”

“It’s—Osylla. Damn it, I should have known she wouldn’t let us just ride away! These things, Sonja—coming at us—they’re other souls trapped by Osylla in animated corpses. Do you understand? Sonja—if these things slay us, she’ll own our souls! We’ll be trapped!”

“Like hell!” Sonja growled. “Those sons-of-bitches aren’t getting any closer to me than a sword-length!” She glanced about, noticing a large oak off to Daron’s left. “Make for that tree! Get your back against it!”

“But the horses! They’ll attack the horses, too!”

“Erlik’s teeth! Get going!”

Daron ran towards the oak just as one of the creatures in the forefront went for him. Quickly, frantically, he whipped his blade around him like a scythe. With a wild shriek the swamp-thing fell back, gashed across the chest, and it collapsed in the mud, kicking and writhing.

Another came after it, but now Daron had his back to the tree and was calling the thing names, poking at it with his sword and daring it to come ahead.

Sonja had freed two of the horses and slapped their haunches to send them galloping away—but by the time she reached Daron’s horse, one of the swamp-things was dangerously close. Furiously, she swung her blade and hacked the creature in the side. It wailed eerily, clawing at its burst ribs, and flopped backwards. But in that instant a second creature attacked Daron’s horse. The animal reared and shrieked as its foul assailant’s talons and teeth ripped into it. Sonja rushed at the thing.

“Damned hell-spawn!” she howled. As the thing turned a snarling, bloody mouth full of teeth at her, she swung her sword in a savage arc and lopped the head free. It flew high and then splashed down into a pool of stagnant water, still snarling. The body reeled stupidly, then rocked back, tilted and flopped twitching to the ground.

Three of them stopped—

No, four—for just then Daron lunged and caught one in the bowels, ripping it open with the length of his sword. The thing cried out hoarsely as its entrails spilled out in a tangle at Daron’s feet.

He kicked it away barely in time to meet the attack of a fifth thing…

.…While two more came at Sonja. Jumping back and dropping to a crouch, she snatched up a rock and hurled it. It struck the foremost creature in the forehead with a loud crack. Dazed, it tripped backwards. Sonja yelled a Hyrkanian war cry and lunged for the other one. It clawed the air wildly in a mad attempt to catch her by the arm or neck. Sonja’s blade flashed, and a hand went flying. The thing shrieked. She dodged to one side as the thing hurled itself forward, the talons of its remaining hand groping, and swung again. Her sword sheared away half its head, splattering its rotten brains about the grass.

Daron yelled in furious glee as the last of his attackers went down with a severed spine. It writhed on the soggy ground, head and arms moving feebly.

But the one which Sonja had struck with the rock rose up and came at her again.

“Sell your soul to a witch, would you?” she snarled at it. “Filth! Swamp dung! Come on—just try and get hold of me!”

Daron watched, wondering at Sonja’s performance. She was furious—not simply at the swamp-creature, surely; no, she was furious about some great grievance or passion within herself.

The swamp-thing eyed her venomously, hissing, its whitish eyes shifting from her face to her sword arm to her midsection.

“Stinking scum!” Sonja yelled at it.

The thing lunged with quick, taloned hands. Sonja screamed with rage. With two deft sword strokes she lopped off an arm and cut it through the groin.

As it fell, kicking and mewling, she brought her sword down in a final sweep and cut its head free.

In the heavy silence that followed, gnats and mosquitoes buzzed. Sonja felt her heart pumping in her breast like a thunderous storm.

Daron approached her, carefully. “Done?”

She looked up at him. “Are you sure she isn’t sending more?”

He grinned darkly and shrugged. “I don’t think—Mitra!” He looked beyond her.

Sonja pivoted.

Daron’s horse, wounded, lay on the muck, bleeding and thrashing its legs. Its mouth foamed; its eyes had turned a muddy white. Even as Sonja and Daron watched it, its bared teeth began to coat with slimy saliva and distend into long, wicked fangs. Then, incredibly, its eyes blazed with a yellow light. It moved weakly to gain its feet; then it growled, a sound no horse had ever made.

“I must kill it,” Daron told Sonja. “We have no choice.”

He moved forward, paused a step away from the poisoned brute and brought his sword abruptly down on its throat. The horse shrieked, red blood shot out, its movements stilled, the mad light faded from its eyes; so it died, its life-force uncaptured.

Daron looked behind him. “The other horses—?”

Sonja was staring at the ground, not saying anything.

“Sonja, are the other horses all right?”

She looked at him, a burning intensity in her eyes. “What the hell are we doing here, Daron? Look at this! Look at all this! Tell me, damn you—who the hell are you, anyway?”

He walked towards her, sheathing his sword. “Sonja. The other horses?”

She took in a deep breath, studied her blade, then scabbarded it. “The other horses are all right, Daron.”

“Good,” he said. “Good. That’s all I really wanted to know.”

He lifted a hand and gently touched her hair.

Sonja kept staring at the ground.

By nightfall they were free of the swamp, on dry land, in a woodland with reasonably fresh air and trees spaced well enough so that they could see the stars and the moon.

They built a fire, unconcerned, or uncaring, that someone or something out there might be drawn to the light. And while they sat there in the darkness beneath the stars, as they had on so many nights before, each with private guilts and worries and memories, Daron began to speak of Osylla and Urrim, and then of destinies and deaths, of pathways and choices, of uncertainties—of all that it might mean when a star falls from the sky and the land around it where it strikes the earth goes mad.

As he spoke, he paused sometimes to gather his thoughts, and in one of his pauses, the heretofore silent Sonja spoke up. Some of her heart’s chill eased as she listened to his grave words, and so at last she told him of the previous night. “Was it only last night? Yes—it all seems so long ago…Last evening, then—when you and Osylla were in the hut and I was outside with Urrim…”She told him of Unim’s strangely found voice, eloquent and prophetic, and of the blue glow in the woods.

Daron was all attention.

“It was the same blue being,” Sonja confessed, “that appeared to me years ago on the night my family was murdered and I was raped—the thing that infused me with my destiny. Daron…can you understand it? Why should this happen?”

“I—I’m not sure, Sonja…”

“It isn’t my imagination, although sometimes in the years since then I’ve thought that it might have been. And now—now after all this time, after I’ve set myself upon my trail and come to know myself—when I am myself, Red Sonja of Hyrkania and all that means, or so I thought—the being reappears, and speaks of something I cannot understand or accept—something that feels contrary to everything it gave me to learn years ago—and my heart breaks in half and I go to war with myself.”

“And that is why you’ve been disconsolate all day long. So angry.”

“Yes, yes. Osylla…Urrim…I can’t deny my hatred of that. Daron! All these things at once! What does it mean?”

“All these things,” he whispered, “since our paths have fallen together.”

She looked at him, into his dark eyes. “Don’t, Daron.”

“There is something between us, Sonja. You can’t deny it. You know it’s there.”

“Something. But…”

“It may stretch through many lifetimes before and after us, Sonja. We may deny it, but it’s still there. Sometime before, when you and I weren’t Sonja and Daron—and sometime hence, when you’ll no longer be Red Sonja nor I Daron kos Odurac—this will still be, between us, this small part of the great storm, the great wind of the All and the Eternal.”

“Now you sound like*the son of a sorcerer.”

“Do I? Or do I sound, rather, like a man who believes in greater things than man? For I do—while still believing in the greatness of man—believe also in the Order, the Whole.”

Sonja looked into the fire. “I believe in myself, Daron. That blue being must have been myself, that’s all—some conjuration from my mind, some creation of my own emotions.”

“That is all that life is,” Daron said.

There was something in the air this night. *The moon rose high and still they talked, though often they treated serious subjects in a cursory fashion, out of exhaustion or hesitating wonder.

“I admire your outlook on things,” Daron admitted to Sonja. <4I wish I had more of it myself.”

She scoffed, making a face.

“But it’s true. You know you can’t deny the Entire—and you don’t—but rather than worry about it fruitlessly, you spend your time doing just what you can to keep yourself whole and productive.”

“That’s all anyone ever does.”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Not as you do. I’ve never met one so—successful—as you are.”

“Successful?”

“You never doubt yourself when it counts. You depend upon yourself. You know yourself—trust yourself.”

“But, I’m lonely—and alone.”

“Are you?”

“Incredibly, Daron. Sometimes I wonder if I wear my armor to shield more than just my body—if somehow I mean it to shield all of me, my person, my dreams, my memories, my hopes…”

“And for what do you hope, Sonja?”

“I can’t answer that. I have pondered it and pondered it—almost endlessly some nights. And I cannot answer it. For, whatever answer I find, it makes no sense in the morning. I have put myself upon a path, and I wonder if I lead my own way upon that path, or if it leads me.”

Daron nodded, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. The flames limned his features, which in that moment seemed full of both sadness and nobility.

“I, too, am alone,” he told her. “Sometimes I feel as though I am a damned soul, being a sorcerer’s son. These things within me—I can’t depend upon them. I have strengths, but I’m not sure where they lie. A witch, a mean a witch like Osylla, can mock me and frighten me. Yet my powers, my dreams—almost my memories of things I may have done or accomplished in other lives, as well as my future dreams—these things haunt me. My identity haunts me, my blood haunts me. You’re the daughter of a swordsman, Sonja, and see how well you wear your sword? I am the son of a wizard, but how well do I wear that? Sometimes I am frightened of myself—of what I can do, and of what I cannot do. Sometimes I feel that I am only half a person, and yet twice any other person I meet.”

“That,” Sonja told him, “is just how I feel, too, Daron…”

She stared into the fire, and Daron looked at her, at her beautiful face warmed by the glow of the campfire’s flames.

Later, as the firelight died and they sat gazing up into the clear night, they saw a streak of light against the deeps of the eternal heavens. It vanished as quickly as a thought. A falling star…

Daron was sitting close to Sonja. They felt one another’s presence strongly. Their hands were pressed together.

“The fire is getting low,” Daron commented.

“Don’t,” Sonja said to him, a quickness and frailty in her voice.

“Don’t what? Sonja?”

“Don’t kiss me, Daron. Don’t…kiss me.”

“As you wish.”

She looked to the sky again, but saw no other falling star.

Chapter 6

Crosscurrents

They continued on in the morning, and by noon came upon a deep creek in the middle of a flowering valley, The sun, still and golden far above, wrapped Daron and Sonja and the flowering field in a haze of light and warmth. Their mood lightened as they left Osylla’s poisoned land, and even Sonja, turning her face to the heat of the late summer sun, found the thought of Urrim less painful than it had been.

She tethered her horse to a crab apple tree, ate some fruit and drank some of the water from the creek. Daron voiced an intention to bathe, and so Sonja lay down on the bank to chew on a stalk of grass and study the faraway gray clouds. In a short time, she fell asleep. Vague dreams came to her, as clouded and insubstantial as the hazy skies she had gazed upon. She could not identify anything in her dreams, for phantoms floated there and did not approach her, although there was a witch in them, and a temple, and her father, and a sorcerer’s son, and a star that fell from heaven—as well as a tall, white woman dressed in flames, trapped in a bleak corridor.

How long she had dozed Sonja did not know. She awoke to the sound of Daron sitting down beside her. He was undressed save for his breeches, and was slapping the wet from his hair. Sonja, lying on her side, was impressed by the ruggedness and compactness of his 99 physique; it had never concerned her before, although she had seen Daron half-naked many times in Bo-ugan’s village.

He caught her looking at him and smiled.

“Did I sleep long?”

“Long enough for me to take a quick bath. No, not long.”

“Is the water warm?”

“Just. It’s a bit nippy where it sprays up from the rocks. Stick to the middle of the stream; there’s a warm undercurrent. And minnows.”

She sat up and began taking off her mail. “Are the minnows fun?”

“Best part of the bath.”

She wondered at herself even as she undressed before Daron. Modesty did not bother Sonja; what did bother her was, simply, her being disturbed at all. Knowing men as she did, she had never made it a point to bare herself around them. On the other hand, if circumstances found her undressed, so be it. Nudity for her was nothing to be ashamed of. Depending on the circumstances, it could be a threat or an advantage.

On the other hand, sometimes it was the first step towards trust…

She removed her soft leather tunic and boots and laid her sword on top of them. A glance down showed her just how grimy the trek through the swampland had been. She looked at Daron, then walked gracefully down to the stream and stepped in.

Daron, reclining on the grass, watched her admiringly, no lust in his thoughts. Then, while Sonja bathed, he began walking upstream along the bank, carrying with him his and Sonja’s saddlebags. The creek bank led him into a wooded copse where stood a variety of fruit and berry trees, and Daron plucked those which had not quite ripened and thrust them into the bags. This kept him happily occupied until he noticed that the sun was beginning to dip in its arc; then, throwing a saddlebag over each shoulder, he made his way back through the copse and along the bank.

As he cleared the trees, he noticed Sonja lying again in the grass beneath the crab apple trees. She was still nude; the golden sun colored her body, and her flaming red hair was fanned out around her upon the grass.

Listening to himself, watching himself as though from afar as another person, Daron approached the Hyrkanian quietly. Within a few paces of her, he found that she was asleep. Silently he deposited the heavy saddlebags on the ground and knelt beside her.

Aye, she was beautiful. He knew her to be beautiful and strong in spirit, temperament and soul, and she was also beautiful in form, and that awakened powerful feelings in Daron. His memories of spending time with Sonja on the road, of fighting beside her in the cold shadows of the Temple, of traveling with her through the perilous swamp, of angering her and arguing with her—all melded, fused in this one moment, into a total perception of her. Red Sonja—Red Sonja of Hyrkania, the swordswoman. Nearly a goddess, judged Daron—imperfect yet completely herself, fiery and valorous, hard as steel yet hiding a core of warm and human simplicity.

Aye, he loved her.

Her hair, tossed upon the grass, one curl caressing her chin…the highness of her cheekbones and the curve of her long eyelashes…her full lips, half-parted in slumber…the soft line of her throat as it curved down into her shoulders and arms…her breasts, full and finely contoured, shuddering gently as she breathed…her supple belly rising and falling…her red-gold pubic hair, as vivid as the long tresses that fell over her face…and her strong, shapely thighs and calves that had flexed countless times in contest with warriors, in perfect coordination with sword-arm and wrist and eye. All of her—her physical beauty, and more. How could he have angered this woman, have argued with her? How could he not admire and respect her temper, her mind, the life she had led and the grievous sufferings she had known, the many evils she had endured and fought? This woman, this individual spirit, housed in this exquisite form—this living woman.

“Sonja—I love you.”

She did not reply.

“I love you, Sonja. Do you not love me?”

It was a suddenly new Sonja who lay there, a Red Sonja strange even to herself, a Sonja who, with a quaking voice, answered Daron without looking at him, “Yes, Daron. Yes, I love you, Daron.”

He leaned toward her, making a slight noise in the grass.

And Sonja, then, with this betraying sound, stood up quickly, looked down at him. “Yes, I love you. Ask of me no more than that, Daron. Give me time to—ponder myself.”

The sorcerer’s son felt anger rise within him—and then, it disappeared, and acceptance took its place. For, what else had he asked of her for himself, surely—whether he had voiced the asking or not?

Sonja walked to her clothes and put them on.

The sun was dipping toward distant forests as they mounted their horses and continued on their way through the late afternoon.

Sonja and Daron halted, dismounted and let their horses graze while they themselves stretched their legs, sipped cool water from a small creek and munched on fruit. They were silent, each with his or her own thoughts. Sonja thought back to her waking up in Daron’s arms—waking up to Daron’s kisses, and kissing him back. Half-asleep, half-awake, eager to caress Daron, eager for him to take her in his arms—had she been truer to herself than she was when awake?

Thinking this and wondering at it, her memory suddenly flashed back to the day she and Daron had left the village. Surprised at herself, Sonja found herself reminded of old Iatos’s words to her on a morning that seemed centuries ago:

“What if you’ve come to expect slaps, and the next thing you hear is music? If you expect slaps, you may react to music as you would to a slap. Whose fault is that?

If you’ve grown up with enemies, you think everyone is an enemy. If you’ve used a knife only for killing, then how can you teach yourself that it can also be used for slicing bread—or for carving some beautiful work of art from a piece of wood?”

Suddenly excited at remembering Iatos’s words and Daron’s kisses at the same time, Sonja felt a leap of emotion, a new trustfulness, and found herself smiling and imagining Daron’s face.

She turned and looked where he sat by her, a short distance away.

Something in his attitude chilled the wild emotions which had suddenly erupted within her.

“Daron?”

He was staring towards the sunset far to the west, staring to where the burning orange globe was setting afire the treetops and sending up a darkly clouded, purple and azure twilight—plumes of blue incense rising from coals in a brazier.

“What is it, Daron?”

“The…amulet.” His hands were on his tunic. “It’s getting warmer. It feels very warm.”

Sonja’s voice dropped a bit. “Osylla—? Or—your father, you mean?”

“My father,” he said, staring at the dying sun. “Soon…”

It appeared first as only a shadow on a hillside—a dark streak etched into the surrounding gray shale and tufted overgrowth. But as they rode nearer, the shadow reformed into a series of shadows to show a truer aspect of what they approached: stone columns, a long expanse of stairs, trees with gnarled roots hovering bn the slope above. As the last of the sunlight died and was almost imperceptibly replaced by frosty moonlight, Sonja and Daron drew close to the hillside and its queer shadows, and knew that it was what they were looking for: A small stone hut, a row of columns and wide stone stairs stood at the threshold of some door leading into the hill itself.

Their horses balked as they came closer; Daron’s shied and tried to rear, and he swore at it while trying to keep it steady. As they came to the expanse of flat stone in front of the stairs—a wide area paved with many flagstones, apparently centuries old—Daron ripped open his tunic and cursed in Mitra’s name.

“What is it?” Sonja called to him—although immediately she understood his problem. For Daron had tom the amulet from inside his shirt and was bouncing it in his right hand. It glowed with shifting hues of orange, yellow and fiery red, a brilliant gleam of white at its center.

“Mitra, Mitral” he growled. “The damned thing is too hot to hold!”

He dismounted awkwardly, and as he did so the blazing jewel fell to the ground. Sonja got down also; Daron’s mount briefly hid her view of the gem, but again she heard him swearing, this time in amazement. When she stepped around, she saw what was happening.

The blazing amulet was sending up a yellowish cloud of smoke and crumbling before their eyes there on the flat stones before the portico. Sonja heard a loud hissing noise, like steam issuing from a lidded cauldron, and suddenly from the heart of the jewel a spark of dazzling fire streaked upward and vanished-into the night sky, too quickly for the eye to follow.

“Erlik—!”

Sonja ran forward and knelt. Where the opalescent gem had so recently flamed in splendor there was now only a lump of dark ash lying on the flags.

“He has returned to the Fullness,” said Daron, awe in his voice.

“You mean—Urrim?”

“Yes. Do not grieve for him, Sonja. He has gone forth from here to be reunited with the One who was before all the worlds. Not so fortunate are we and others like us, who must yet endure the cycles of birth and death for many ages.”

Sonja looked at the night sky, then nodded. “So, all is well with Urrim. I believe you, Daron—I must believe you. But now it seems we have our own destiny to pursue. Where does it lie?”

Daron looked up at the entranceway in the hillside. “This must be it,” he said in a hushed tone. “The jewel can lead us no farther.”

They tethered their horses to some saplings and, loosening their swords in their scabbards, began their way across the flagstones towards the flat, low steps. A cool breeze blew against them from across the wide fieldland, blowing dead leaves across the stone, scattering small pebbles and bits of grit that swirled in tiny wind funnels. The moon, as full and brilliant as the watching eye of Mitra himself, broke from behind a length of wispy cloud and poured silent light upon the scene.

That moonlight revealed the inset behind the stone-columned portico in the hillside. It was an opening, an opening upon which at one time had hung a door. But now only the hinges remained, and those were rusted and bent on the iron staples driven straight into the rock of the hillside.

Daron and Sonja stared for a long moment into that opening. The moonlight showed them the first few yards of its floor, but beyond that was naught but a black void, unbroken and silent.

“Well…” Daron commented, feeling in his pouch for flint, and steel.

But Sonja was already a step ahead of him, using her boot-knife to cut free the branch of a tree growing through cracked stones in the paving.

Gather some of that grass over there,” she indicated to Daron. “It looks dry enough.”

He got together a tight handful of drying bunch-grass, and Sonja tied it to the end of her branch. “It won’t last long,” she admitted, “but it’s better than no light at all. Unless you have an oil lamp on you, by any chance.”

“Fresh out of oil lamps tonight, I’m afraid.”

“There.” She finished tying the grasses with a length of leather thong. “Let’s get into the mouth of the cave, out of the wind.” .

It was silent and somehow ominous, standing there. The sounds of the rattling, dead leaves and the occasional nicker of the horses just outside seemed strangely distant, as though just beyond some invisible veil.

“Hold the torch steady, Daron, please.”

“Sorry…”

She continued scraping flint and steel until a spark caught on the dry grass; the dead tufts blazed up instantly, showing them a long tunnel straight ahead.

“Damn,” Sonja commented in a low voice. “That torch won’t last long.”

Daron walked ahead with the burning brand, Sonja only a step behind him. Once away from the mouth of the tunnel, their torch burned more slowly and did not flicker or waver. The tunnel had been hewn from the solid rock and went straight back into the hillside.

They hurried on. As the torch began to sputter, rapidly burning out of fuel, Sonja and Daron both noticed an open doorway to their left. They peered briefly in, saw nothing, went on.

“At least,” Daron said, “we can go as long as the light holds out—no chance of getting lost. We can always go back for more torches.

Intrigued by what little they had seen within the stone tunnel, Sonja agreed, and they walked more quickly.

A second door, open but shadowed, appeared on their right, then a third on their left again. Sonja passed closest to this last, and as they went by she thought she heard—very faintly, perhaps mistakenly—a small noise issue from the darkness inside.

She slowed her steps. “Daron…”

But he, a few paces ahead, waved to her. “Hurry, Sonja. The torch is about gone, but I think I see light up ahead.”

“What?”

“Come on, come on!”

There was, Sonja saw, a slight bend to the tunnel, and as they rounded it, Daron’s observation proved true. It was light, definitely—light emanating from the end of the tunnel. The floor sloped gently down.

Then the torch burnt out, the last wisps of flaming grass fluttering in dying sparks against the walls of stone. Daron cast the branch to the ground and hastened on, Sonja just behind him.

As he hurried down the sloping floor of the tunnel, he whispered tensely, “The light—it’s in a room. Sonja, there’s a room!”

“All right, all right, don’t go too fast. We don’t know what we might be letting ourselves in for!”

The doping tunnel floor ended at a large, open arch in the rock. Inside they saw a room -a huge, subterranean chamber lit with torches and a multitude of oil lamps.

“Gods!” Daron breathed, tingling all over. “Sonja, I feel so strange. I feel warm, even feverish—”

“Take it easy, you’re just excited.”

“My palms are wet. There’s something in there, it’s tugging at me.”

He hurried on, threw out his arms and grabbed the sides of the entrance with both hands, as though to hold himself up from collapsing. He spoke no more, but stared within.

Sonja approached from behind, looking over Daron’s shoulder. Her brows creased. Familiar as she had become with Wizards and their abodes of magic, she froze in shock. She saw, too, that Daron was now visibly trembling, shivering and sweating and only barely holding himself upright with his white-knuckled grasp of the rocky door frame.

The room was lit with dim yellow torches and oil lamps, and with stranger sources of light as well. Crystalline globes of many sizes illuminated the chamber with diaphanous banners of purple, blue, pink and saffron. There were altars, tables and windows—windows!—cut into the living rock and showing, where there should have been only more rock, strange tableaus of creatures upon windy plains, all in red and mauve and yellow—horrible life forms and phantasms. Braziers full of liquids boiled and sent up fumes; books lay open, their leaves fluttering though Sonja felt no breeze. Runes and cartouches were hewn into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, some inset with jewels, some with glowing metals, others with glossy woods and bits of bone.

In the center of the strange room, in the midst of all its strange objects and lights, a huge double circle had been channeled into the stone floor. The channels were filled with candles and torches and fuming incenses which sent up a globe of blue vapor. Within that vapor, in the middle of the double circle, sat a man—tall, gaunt and pale—dressed in a black robe and a scarlet robe. His head was bald and shiny, his eyes were drawn deeply into their sockets, and his arms were thrown out and the fingers splayed; his body was shuddering and his lips working soundlessly.

A sorcerer—gaunt as death but alive, veiled from dear sight by the blue smoke of incense, mumbling soundlessly as he stared directly at Sonja and Daron.

Shuddering, hugging the stone entranceway, Daron gasped, “My…my father!”

Daron stared into the chamber, feet planted firmly, arms braced on the sides of the archway as though he were resisting a compulsion. His eyes never left the motionless sorcerer, his father, within the blue-hazed magical circles. He did not speak, but his arms trembled as he clutched the arch’s sides.

Sonja, however, was less entranced. After her initial surprise and shock at the magical vibrancy of the room, she held back instinctively from its atmosphere of malignancy, for she sensed that that atmosphere was thick with more than the pluming incense fumes and the miasmic swirling of colored lights. Some intuition warned her not to let herself enter that room; and she was still uneasy about the sound she had heard back down the tunnel.

Reaching carefully past Daron, she took up an oil lamp that burned on a low stand just within the door. The air of the chamber prickled against her skin, but the lamp was reassuringly solid. Daron still stared in fascination at the circle of candles and smoke. Keeping her eyes on him, Sonja backed away with the oil lamp.

“Watch him, Daron,” she admonished, hoping he could still hear her. “If he comes out of his trance, warn me. I’m going to check on something.” Then she turned down the tunnel and proceeded by the lamp’s filmy light.

After a few moments she came to the door on her right and paused outside to see if she had truly heard any noise.

It came again—that dim, muffled sound, unrecognizable but certainly there.

Holding forth the lamp, Sonja stepped into the room, and for the second time within minutes felt cold shock ripple through her. More shadowed than illuminated by the light of her lamp was a large stone room, empty save for a plain rough table, a chair, some unlit torches on the walls—and the strange object in the center. Upon a stone dais stood a huge, crystalline sphere, a great globe twice the length of a man in diameter, and shining by some luminescence from within.

Sonja doubted her own vision. Something white seemed to flicker within the sphere, but because the oil lamp was dim and the light within the sphere was one moment brilliant and the next moment cloudy and fitful, she could not be sure she was not imagining it. And if there were—what…? some demon? some trapped foulness?—brought up from hell or down from the Void by the black sorcerer down the tunnel…

Lifting her oil lamp, Sonja lit three of the torches nearest her on the walls, then faced again the sphere on the dais. She was astonished; she stepped closer, setting down her lamp and loosening her sword.

There was a man inside the sphere—a man floating amid the milky clouds. Yet, no—surely not—the luminescence from within must have tricked her with its wavering glow.

No! It was a man! Now his face came close to her again, the burning, frantic eyes stared at her, distorted by the curve of the globe! It was an old man, trapped and desperate. He rapped upon the shimmering edge of his glassy prison with his knuckles; he seemed to strike with all his might, yet his motion was slowed by the thick vapors which surrounded him, so that all that came through was the dull sound which Sonja had heard earlier.

Not knowing what to do, she stood where she was. The old man in the sphere swam toward her again, seeming to fight currents that pulled at him and at the vapors within the globe.

There was a mist on the inside of the sphere that was like the glistening film that forms on the surface of cold glass in a warm room. Now, as the prisoner plunged haphazardly into view once more, he tried to write quickly upon this film, tracing letters with his finger. His face held an anguished look; he stretched and turned as the currents tugged at him, striving to complete his brief message, rubbing the letters backwards upon the film. In a moment, although he was sucked back into the mists before he could complete his words, Sonja saw enough to understand.

His finger had traced: EMOIADOL—

Free me!

Instantly, Sonja charged up the short steps of the dais, no longer willing to abide die man’s obvious torment when she might do something to ease it. With a sudden exertion, she put her hands to the crystalline surface, braced her legs, dug her boots into the stone floor and heaved against the shining globe.

It was unpleasantly warm to the touch. For a moment it rocked with her initial powerful thrust, and then moved no more.

The wrinkled face of the trapped man swam into view again, gaunt with agony, pleading. His lips moved. Sonja could not follow his words; yet she did not need to. She knew what he wanted her to do.

Furious that her first attempt had accomplished nothing, Sonja drew her sword and stepped back nimbly, allowing herself just the right space in which to whirl it. To her surprise, the blade seemed to glow with a blue light: the same sort of bluish haze which formed the atmosphere of the sorcerer’s chamber down the tunnel. She blinked, and the vapors of the globe seemed to take on a bluish cast—the same blue glow which had visited her in the swamp, and on the night of her destiny years ago…

“Erlik and Tarim!” Sonja howled, bringing up her sword, and in a broad side-swing she smashed it full against the crystal sphere.

It bounced back. A ringing vibration jolted her arm and stung her wrist as the blade whipped back through the air. She swore angrily, snarling as she hauled back to try another blow, regardless of the pain it might bring her.

But the old man in the sphere came into view again, waving his arms slowly through the blue-white mist. He pointed at Sonja, then away from her. She followed his eyes, turned, saw again the one small table that stood in the corner of the room.

Upon it lay an object.

“That?” she yelled to the man.

Did he nod affirmatively as the mists pulled him back again?

Growling, Sonja sheathed her sword with a clang, jumped down from the dais, went to the table and picked up the object. It was a rock, very heavy, with an uncommon smoothness, almost an oily feel to it. It had been shaped into a rude egg-shape, and upon it were runes or sigils which she could not understand.

“What am I supposed to do with this? Recite some kind of—?”

Her first impulse was to hurl it at the sphere in anger; then, pulling herself up, Sonja reflected that that might not be a bad idea. She held it up in her hand, saw the face, old and wizened, appear again behind the surface of the sphere.

The man’s eyes seemed to implore her as he gestured at himself with his hands.

Sonja’s lips drew back in a snarl, her nostrils flared. With all her might she threw the rock straight at the sphere; she had just a glimpse of the speeding missile before some warning inner voice caused her to throw herself belly-first to the floor, fold her arms tightly over her head—

A tremendous explosion shook the room. Sonja was bounced clear of the floor for a moment. When she opened her eyes and gasped for the breath that had been knocked out of her, she saw only an impenetrable blue fog and heard only a feeble, floundering scuffle as of an old man lying on the floor not far away…

Then she heard the scream.

It was a horrible sound, booming tremendously, as a god might sound going down in painful death battling some Titan. But it was not from the man on the floor. It roared down the tunnel—a terrifying, anguished cry that seemed as if it would go on forever.

Astonished, Sonja rose groggily to her feet, glanced through the clearing fumes to the man on the ground, then stared at the doorway.

The heavy sounds of footsteps rushed toward her, louder and louder. Then a shadow blocked the doorway—a form that threw out its arms, then stumbled into the room, into the bluish smoke and the wavering light of the torches on the wall.

Daron.

His face was racked with anger and pain. When he saw Sonja, his features wrinkled into a mask of hatred and loathing. He drew his sword.

“Damn you!” he shrieked. “Damn you, damn you to the thousand hells! Damn you for a hell’s spawn, Red Sonja, you bitch, you daughter of a whore and a demon!”

“Daron! By all the gods—!”

“You’ve killed my father, damn you! You’ve killed my father!”

Sword up, he raced forward and jumped at her, blade swinging.

Chapter 7

A Pact

Sonja threw herself backwards, barely avoiding the vicious sweep of Daron’s blade. She stumbled into the table, grunted as the sword-edge glanced off the small of her back, throwing herself sideways. Her knees hit the floor and she rolled; Daron’s blade slammed into the wooden table behind her. She scrambled away from the maddened young sorcerer, finally finding the room to draw her own sword.

Some instinct told her to duck when her first thought was to rise up. She rolled again, and the wind of Daron’s blade sang in the air above her.

“Erlik take you^!” she yelled, anger replacing shock. Glimpsing a boot in front of her and the shadow of an arm descending through the blue mist, Sonja threw her blade up before her. A numbing jolt raced down her arm as the sword blades clashed. Daron’s boots dragged as he drew back, and that moment was all she needed to get to her feet and face him through the thinning fog that still clung in the air.

“Damn it, Daron,” she growled, “what in Mitra’s name—?”

“You killed my father!” he hissed at her.

“How could I?” Sonja pointed her sword at the white-robed oldster who was now groping half-dazed atop the dais amid the dissolving shards of the shattered sphere. “I was in here, freeing this old man from some sorcerous 113 trap. What makes you think that—?”

“My father is dead!” Daron howled. “My entire life I’ve longed to meet him, and the moment I recognize him, you kill him!” Screaming, he swung his blade up and attacked again.

Sonja swore in disgust and surprise, but her reflexes were quick; her blade met Daron’s with a clang and a shooting of sparks. They closed, slashing at one another, blades ringing and rasping together. Sonja moved this way and that, parrying, thrusting and evading. Daron was a strong swordsman, as she knew from the many times they had fought side by side, but by deft footwork she eluded him twice and felt the advantage turning to her.

The old man on the floor groaned, but neither paid him any attention.

“Daron, I had no intention of—”

“He’s dead, witch!”

“I’m not going to kill you, Daron! Give it up!”

“My father’s dead!” he groaned, between the clashing of sword blades.

“He was a sorcerer, damn it! Stop this foolishness and tell me—!”

But Daron, blindly carried by the impulsive rage that gripped him, moved in again. His blade struck like a darting snake, and Sonja gave way a surprised step or two before his quickness and skill. Nimbly she parried and flung Daron’s blade from her.

Her anger growing at the stupidity of their quarrel, Sonja determined to end it. Deliberately, she moved her leading foot ahead, one step, two, and swept her sword-arm in time to it. Daron fouled once, twice, then dropped back, shocked at his missteps, suddenly shaken by her skillful resistance to his passionate need to defeat her, to hurt her as he was sure—as he had thought he was sure—that she had hurt him. Sonja crossed him neatly, deflected his blade, drew back her own for a thrust—

She hesitated.

In that moment, Daron, rousing, parried the slow movement, but himself too had slowed.

The old man on the floor of the dais began to grunt and cough. They heard his voice, though neither yet gave him a glance. “What…? What?” he wheezed. And then, more sternly though with a quaking voice, “Stop this!”

But Sonja moved ahead again. Three deft strokes, and she had Daron backed against the wooden table. A false sidestep to draw him in, and then her blade attacked his, knocking it aside. She lunged forward.

“Stop this, I say! Stop this!” They heard the sounds of the man scrambling awkwardly to his feet.

Daron was bent back over the table, off-balance; his sword was knocked downward and his blade bit into the wood, Sonja’s atop it.

She held his blade there, its edge in the table.

Panting, gasping, they stared at one another through the cleared air.

“Daron…?”

“Let—let me up, Sonja.”

“I’ll let you up, but you must—”

“My anger—it has passed, Sonja.”

She stared into his eyes, not trusting him. But those eyes held no more mischief.

Behind them, the old man’s feet shuffled on the floor. “Stop this, stop this! Lay aside your arms, I beg you!”

Daron glanced toward him, but Sonja did not turn around to look.

“Daron?” she whispered.

“Let me up,” he answered hoarsely. “My anger has passed. Forgive me, Sonja…”

Still not trusting him—she knew how untrustworthy are the passions when aroused to their limit—Sonja eased up on her sword, lifted it an<J stepped back, still keeping her edge up, the point just a breath from Daron’s heart.

He bent forward, lifted his free hand to wipe spittle from his mouth, then pulled up to free his blade from the table.

He moved his sword-arm slowly. Sonja stepped back, giving him no advantage. But Daron merely stood before her, defeated, broken—more by his own volcanic outburst of emotion, it seemed, than by Sonja’s having bested him at swordplay.

He tossed his sword slightly in the air, caught it by the hilt with the point down, then set it into his scabbard and let it slide home with a clank.

“Done,” he said, still gasping for air.

Sonja sheathed her own blade and stepped forward; standing beside Daron, she turned to face the old man— still keeping Daron in her side vision.

“Please,” the old man said to them, “no more violence here. The woman did only as I begged her to do.”

Old he was, but now, free of the clinging mists of the sphere, he seemed vibrant and even powerful of aspect. He was clothed in a shimmering white robe and brown leather sandals; his one ornament was a ring set with a green jewel on his right middle finger. His head was bald, but a long white beard and mustache flowed down the front of his robe. His eyes were gray and piercing.

“I know not what brought you hither,” he went on, “but you arrived in time to free me, and I am grateful. Soon it would not have been possible, for I believe the conjuration was nearing its fulfillment.”

“The conjuration?” Sonja repeated. “Is that why you were trapped in that vessel?”

The elder nodded. “Odurac called me hither a month ago; we knew one another of old and had scores to settle, but he claimed he had need of my aid. I came armed with my magic, and wary. But be had gained immense strength since our last meeting, and he weakened me quickly and imprisoned me. But, forgive me…my name is Ban-Itos. I am a refugee from the eastern lands.”

“I am Red Sonja, a free sword.”

“And your companion?”

Daron moved forward; his voice was still thick with emotion. “My name is Daron. I am—the son of Odurac.”

Ban-Itos’s heavy brows lifted; his gray eyes shone. “Ah. Ah,” he muttered. “The sorcerer’s son! By Hotath and Enlil, I do now see the resemblance! Are you a sorcerer, like him? Do you mean wickedness here?”

“I have never mastered sorcery. Like Sonja, I am a hired sword. But I came here seeking my father…I have not seen him since boyhood.” Daron scowled. “And now he is slain.” He turned from Sonja and walked away.

“So Odurac is truly dead? I felt it when you freed me, Red Sonja.”

“Is that really what happened?” she asked. There was sadness in her voice, and she glanced at Daron, standing silently a little distance from them.

“Aye,” whispered Daron, staring at the floor.

Ban-Itos looked to the young man. “I am sorry you lost your parent,” he said, “but surely you recognize now that your father was a…”

“I…know. A practitioner of foul arts. Yet I had need to find him, and question him.”

“For what?” asked Ban-Itos. “I do not mean to pry—but only a matter of great importance could have made you seek this place out. And if we are all caught in the same net, the net that has been weaving itself for nigh on to ten years’ time…”

Daron turned and faced him, astonished. “You mean—the star?”

“The star?” Ban-Itos repeated. “Ah, I understand. You call it a star because it fell from the heavens. I am sorry. I have been thinking of it for so long as empu ki Thotak.’

‘

“Thotas’s god?” Sonja nodded and laughed ironically-

“Yes, a play on words,” said Ban-Itos. “Empu ki Thotak—’Thotas’s god'. Ampuk I Thotak—tbs evil of Thotas…’ This brought you hither?”

“Aye,” replied Daron.

Sonja let out a long breath. “It’s a strange tale, Ban-

Itos—a long journey, with many faces, many…things…”

“I think,” said the old man, “that the three of us are possessed of a common fate, and it would be well if we follow it together. Are you willing?”

Sonja nodded to him, glancing at Daron.

“All right…”

Ban-Itos lifted a robed arm towards the door. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “some fresh air might help all of us.”

Sonja responded at once, striding eagerly across the room; she paused at the door and looked back.

“Please,” Ban-Itos said to Daron in a calm voice. “I mean you no harm, as I’m sure you must know. Whatever has forced our paths together—please, let us discuss it and see where it wishes next to send us.”

Reluctantly, Daron stepped down and crossed the room towards Sonja, went past her without looking up and disappeared into the tunnel. She heard his footsteps thudding hollowly towards the far entrance.

She looked to Ban-Itos, who came toward her. “Odurac’s son!” he muttered to himself, as though still-astonished at the fact.

“Aye,” said Sonja. “Do you disbelieve it?”

“No, no, not at all. Odurac was full of many surprises. Perhaps his son is the same.”

“No doubt,” Sonja agreed in a low voice. “No doubt…” And she followed Ban-Itos out of the room.

Dawn was just a hint of fading darkness to the east as they left the mouth of the cave. The two horses whinnied at the reappearance of their riders. Sonja walked over and petted them, spoke calmly to them, then returned to Ban-Itos and Daron, who had seated themselves some distance from each other on the broken stones of the stairway.

A moist, cool breeze blew upon them. The fresh air was invigorating. Sonja took in several lungfuls before settling herself beside Ban-Itos.

“Sonja,” Daron said in a low, strained voice, looking across at her. “I want to apologize to you for—for what overcame me.”

She watched him, her heart racing, her emotions suddenly unpredictable and topsy-turvy, as seemed to be growing habitual whenever she confronted Daron.

A noncommittal grunt was her only answer, and she then turned to Ban-Itos. “Tell us, old one, how you came to be imprisoned by Odurac. Then we’ll tell you how we came to journey here, and why the star is so important to us.”

Ban-Itos nodded and began his tale; as the night lifted slowly and the early gray of dawn filtered down on them through the trees, Sonja began to understand a pattern to the things that had troubled her and Daron since they first rode to Bo-ugan’s land.

“When die star fell ten years ago,” said Ban-Itos, “both Odurac and I realized its importance and the peril it held for the lands of men. Odurac suggested to me that we lay aside our differences and agree to work together to unravel its powers—and, from a distance, seek to limit Thotas in his mad ambitions. But anger toward me still rankled in Odurac’s heart, and soon it became apparent to me that he wished the star for his own evil uses.

“I have always tried to practice the dilu’um—the Way—and to avoid misuse of my powers. I have studied under many masters, and at one time, long ago, I even learned from Thotas himself, in the very Temple which now he has made a hell. I determined always to master magic and never allow it to master me; thus far I believe I have been successful. But Odurac, like too many of our sort, learned to desire absolute power; for which one lifetime was not enough. He forgot that he must die and return, again and again, with the burden of his former lives still upon him. Instead he sought to extend this single life forever and command worlds. Therefore, his jealousy of Thotas and his eagerness for the star fanned the fires of his wicked ambition almost to madness.

“Disgusted with this at last, I left Odurac. Wandering, I sought to limit Thotas’s powers in my own way, by means of whatever counteractive spells I could manage. But Thotas, protected by his Order and with his energies concentrated within the temple, was too strong an adversary.

“I journeyed for several years, always working in whatever way I could to inhibit Thotas, until one night I received a dream-summons from Odurac. Thinking that he meant it when he suggested that we set aside our differences and once more form an alliance—and hoping in my heart that I could convince Odurac to return to the True Work once again—I came to this place. That was not less than a month ago.” The old mage sighed heavily. “Odurac fooled me completely, blinded me with promises he never intended to keep. I was unguarded against him, wanting to believe; I had no treachery in my heart, yet treachery was all that dwelt in Odurac’s. He imprisoned me in the globe, intending me as a sacrifice, and began the long ritual by which he hoped to trade my spirit to the Elder Things for power against Thotas and perhaps even possession of the star. He was wholly possessed by sorcerous passion; he was seeking to move the very Cosmic Elements themselves, shift them to his favor. He was insane to take such risks. And I am fortunate indeed, Red Sonja, that you and Daron happened here when you did. Surely it was fated that you should free me!”

Daron shot him a look but said nothing.

Sonja, however, eager to know more of the star, asked Ban-Itos, “You know, then, what this thing is that has fallen from the heavens?”

“I suspect,” he replied, “that it is an Ajar-Alazwat—one of the minions created by the Elder Gods to draw to themselves and then transmit to their masters the energies of all beings that suffer. The one Thotas has captured must have been adrift in the Void for centuries, for it is ravenous for the energies of living beings. It took Thotas and his predecessors many generations to call it down from the skies, and now it is bound to earth by their magic—although I sense that Thotas cannot hold it forever. It may even be one of the Primal Gods themselves, though that is doubtful, for its curse spreads only slowly. Whatever it is, it is feeding on the life-energies of the earth, for it will poison all our energies with hatred and can destroy us—first the temple, then the steppelands, then the cities, many temples, nation after nation. If it is a Primal God, it can leach us until all earth is naught but a plain of ashes. Thotas is mad to think that he can harness such a thing to his will!”

“But ten years have passed,” Sonja interjected, “and still it remains in Thotas’s thrall.”

“And meanwhile, are not the lands around it beginning to grow strange, and the people ill? The huge powers before the days of Acheron and Valusia—not sorcerers, not demons, but the mighty things of Creation’s Dawn—were that way. Slow, but inevitable. What is ten years to something that has existed forever? How can it measure ten years? As we measure a teardrop, or a grain of sand? What means to us the entire life of an insect which lasts but one day?”

“Then it must be destroyed,” Sonja said grimly.

“If possible, yes. Or released from Thotas, at the very least, and sent back to the Void. The spell of his magic on it must be broken if we are to save our world at all.” “But—how can we?” Sonja asked. “If the star is so powerful, and if Thotas and his Order control its energies…

“Perhaps with some of the rarest power known to sorcerers,” Ban-Itos told her, and gave Daron a look. “In his life, a wizard’s magic is compromised by his earthly flesh; in death, his potency knows almost no limit, when properly applied.”

Daron stared back at him, but already he understood. It was basic. Why else did sorcerers collect the bones or the dust of long dead, magic-imbued things? Why else was a lock of hair, a fingernail, a slender white bone so powerful? Or even—the ashes of some powerful creature? Yes…ashes…

“Your father is slain,” Ban-Itos said gravely to Daron.

“Burnt instantly,” Daron conceded, “when the energy of his sorcery collapsed upon him.”

“Yet his ashes remain.”

Daron nodded. “And still glowing blue, with the strength of what he had called down—of what he was focusing into being.”

“We will need those ashes.”

Sonja, startled at this sudden interplay, looked from one to the other of them.

“Daron,” Ban-Itos continued, “I must take those ashes. I must use them—I will need them to destroy Thotas. But far rather would I do it with your aid and your approval. Will you give me the ashes of your father, so that you and I—nay, the three of us—can seal our pact and free the world of this evil?”

Daron seemed to give the matter great thought; but, in fact, he had already decided. “I must,” he said finally, “yield to your wishes, venerable one. I agreed to undertake this journey in order to aid Bo-ugan in his fight; I used this journey to find my father. I have found him. Perhaps his ashes are my answer—the answer to both reasons for my journey.”

“You are wise and good,” Ban-Itos said. Putting his hands together palm-to-palm, he bowed in the old greeting between kindred souls.

“Not so wise,” Daron replied, “although perhaps I am learning. And good? Good for a few things, I suppose. You overwhelm me, Ban-Itos, with your simplicity and honesty.”

“If you can leam from me, young man, then do so,” Ban-Itos told him, “for I seek to leam from you.” With that compliment, the old wizard stood up, crossed the few steps to where Daron sat and extended his arm.

Daron looked up at him, then slowly rose to his feet and hesitantly grasped Ban-Itos’s arm above the wrist, even as Ban-Itos likewise grasped his. A sudden shock shivered through Daron as he looked into the old one’s eyes, but he could not be sure if it was truth he saw there, or only a reflection of his own exhaustion. He pulled himself to the wizard and pressed his face to his shoulder.

Sonja got to her feet, touched by the measure of Daron’s emotion.

“I was born of foulness,” Daron whispered to Ban-Itos, his voice rough with emotion. “Show me the way, Father Itos. Emoi sedoli ai su dilu’um, pos Itos-ban!”

“It is done, it is done,” Ban-Itos said in a comforting tone. “You have come seeking aid, and you have found it—as have I.” He looked beyond Daron as the young man embraced him, and to the east saw the sun rising full and clear, and low in the west, as the moon fell, the red planet Nilitu.

“Look you, Daron kos Odurac,” he said, setting him gently from him and pointing to the east, then to the west. ‘The sun, god of the life-force, sends his rays down upon us, while down go the moon and Nilitu, those twins of darkness and shadows. In their eternal battle for supremacy, you and I have made our pact with one another.” Then, in another ancient phrase, he told the young man: “You lead, I shall follow, and whisper to you on the road.” He stared into Daron’s eyes. “My son…”

They embraced again, as men do when there is a powerful bond between them.

They ate their breakfasts in the full light of morning, then went within the hill again to gather up the ashes of Odurac the sorcerer. Daron insisted on taking them up himself. He placed them in a leather pouch, together with a large blue jewel he found in his father’s den, and carried the pouch beneath his tunic.

As they prepared to leave that place, Sonja offered Ban-Itos her mount.

“I can walk,” she told him.

Meaning only courtesy, she was surprised when the elder refused her. But he refused Daron as well.

“It is better,” he said, “that I tread the good earth, for from it I draw my strength. I have wandered far in my days, always treading the earth. It is my power.”

Daron nodded and made a decision. “Then I, too, will walk—beside you, Master Ban-Itos.”

The old wizard smiled. “That is a good thing,” he told Daron appreciatively.

Sonja, being practical, and not intending to gain any sorcerous strength from the earth or from anything else, mounted her horse and walked it slowly beside the men, leading the other horse as well.

“We will need more than Odurac’s ashes,” Ban-Itos said to Sonja and Daron. “An army would be good…”

“An army has sought for ten years to breach that temple,” Sonja reminded him.

“An army,” Ban-Itos repeated, “but this time, with the full strength of sorcery to aid it.”

Sonja was quick to offer an obvious possibility. “Mercenaries, then,” she said.

“Aye,” agreed Daron. “An army of mercenaries to buttress Bo-ugan’s force. We can lure many with promises of power and the wealth of the temple.”

Ban-Itos halted in his steps and set down on the dusty road the satchel he carried with him. He opened it, reached in, rummaged about, then took out a few items that brought gasps of astonishment from Sonja and Daron: a gold drinking vessel, coins and brooches and amulets of pure silver, many gold and silver rings, bracelets and small chains, as well as every sort of precious gemstone.

“Where did that come from?” Sonja asked him.

Ban-Itos nodded back toward the way they had come. “From the cave of the sorcerer. Odurac dwelt in a treasure trove. There were underground rooms—caverns— where he hid his wealth, some of which he had conjured, some stolen or bargained for from certain demons in order to bargain with certain other forces.”

“How much?” Sonja asked.

’ ’Enough to buy a throne—or an army of mercenaries.”

“Done!” Sonja laughed. “By Mitra, Ban-Itos, for a mystic and a sorcerer, you certainly have a practical side to you!”

“I walk,” he reminded her, “solidly upon the earth, remember?”

“With such wealth to flash in their very sight,” Sonja said, “we’ll attract every mercenary in the area!”

“There is a small village near here,” Ban-Itos told her and Daron. “We could begin recruiting there. And less than two days’ journey farther on is the trading center of Ikrahad…”

“You seem to have this plan fairly well thought out, Master Ban-Itos. Had you conceived it before Sonja and I ever appeared at your doorstep?” asked Daron.

“Yes,” he responded. “It is true. For magicians, there is never a tomorrow—only a today filled with endless possibilities. Today, then, and for many yesterdays—ceaselessly, it seemed—I studied my mirrors and my jewels and my bowls of wine, to divine how Thotas might be undone. I told you we were destined to fall in with one another. It was inevitable.”

“You knew it would be us, then?” Sonja asked, somewhat disturbed. “You knew we would be coming long before we—?”

“No,” Ban-Itos corrected her. “As I told you, there are no tomorrows—only the possibilities of every today. I knew someone would come to aid me; I did not know if the someone would come in time to save my frail life. I did not know what the destiny was, and thus whether I had a place in it; but I knew it to be inevitable…and for myself I hoped.”

They rode awhile in silence, Sonja mulling that over.

That evening, they made camp atop a small hill; below them, in a wide, wooded valley, they spied the village.

After their evening meal, Ban-Itos retired into the woods around them to meditate and gather strength. Sonja sat by the fire, yawning intermittently. Daron sat beside her. The moon rose, and Daron stared at it.

There was silence between them for a time. Then, in a heavy voice laden with portent, Daron said quietly, “There is, truly, a destiny upon me, isn’t there, Sonja?” “Aye…”

“As there is upon you.”

“Aye, Daron.”

“Within a month, then, we’ll be back in the village of Bo-ugan, back at the Temple of the Crimson Sun. With an army. And with the ashes of…a sorcerer.” “Aye, Daron.”

“And I am a sorcerer, Sonja.”

“Yes…” She was looking at him, watching him carefully.

He faced her. “But my heart is my own, Sonja. And I love you. Forgive me for what I am, for what I have done, but—I love you, Sonja.”

She answered with a hand that crept into his hand, and in the light of their fire Daron leaned towards Sonja, even as she moved towards him. They kissed—as lovers kiss, long and lovingly, softly and eagerly—until the sadness of what they were once more parted them. Then they sat together, holding hands, staring at the fire, listening to their heartbeats drumming inside them, holding them fast to their destiny and not freeing them, as love usually does for lovers.

PART II

The Return

Chapter 8

Swords

Out from the borderland city of Ikrahad, on a crisp and cool autumnal morning, rode a great army of mercenaries, eager to be at last on the road to conquest and wealth—the road to war.

The recruiting had gone well in Ikrahad and the villages around it, for the city lay along the main northern trade route between the Hyborian kingdoms and lands bordering the Sea of Vilayet far to the east. In its narrow streets swarmed travelers and renegades from many nations: tall, haughty Turanians in fine mail, swarthy Zamorans with daggers beneath their robes, tawny-haired Hyborian warriors from Brythunia and Hyperboria, fair-complexioned barbarians of great stature from far Nordheim and even a smattering of wanderers from lands as far west as Cimmeria, Argos and Zingara. Ban-Itos’s promise of loot drew them all—free swords, mercenaries, killers for hire; the good and the bad, the innocent and the guilty; the casual rogues, equal to anything, and the honest strong men, homeless because of crop failures or barbarian raids. More than once Sonja, Daron and Ban-Itos had to refuse men who had earlier run up against some of the scoundrels already signed on, when bad blood threatened to erupt into a fight without a cause or cure.

But even such things could be turned to their purpose. Daron marveled at the courage and wisdom of Ban-Itos; for the small and slender old man held enthralled his battalions of large rough men night after night.

“We go forth to war,” he would tell them, “yet any of you who think that your swords might waver, turn from me now and go pillage elsewhere.”

Then he would make the fire rise or fall upon its hearth, or the torchlight dim or brighten by gestures of his hands; and thus he kept his simple-minded soldier folk a little in awe of him; enough in awe to make them obedient. “We march,” Ban-Itos warned them, “against a temple-fortress full of men who can do such things. I cannot promise that my own magic will always protect you. You must fend for yourselves, in whatever manner you have learned to fight and survive. And when we are successful—for we shall be successful, even though men of you will die—then you shall have gold, wealth, the means to retire or to build your own fighting bands or otherwise do as you wish. For fighting the unearthly, I promise you earthly recompense.”

So saying, he would hold up golden goblets, or handfuls of silver coins; sometimes, reading a man’s eyes, he would let him come forward from the audience to touch the gold or silver, and his grunts or nods of approval would satisfy many doubters in the rear of the throng.

“I care not who you are, or why you have come—what wrongs you mean to right, or what wickedness you hold in your hearts,” Ban-Itos told them all. “I have hired you—I and this man Daron, and this woman Sonja—and you will answer to us. If you will not, then go now. Otherwise, you will be found out and my magic will blast you to ashes. Such is our justice here. I am a sorcerer. Your swords are deadly, but they cannot kill me; your anger may burn, but it cannot burn me; your arms may be strong, but they are weak against me. Remember that. But if you join us, our united strength will destroy Thotas and his temple of monsters; then you may go your own ways, the richer for having served in our ranks. Yet as long as you follow me, you will do as I command—or I will slay you. Perhaps I appear to you as a simple old man; in reality, I have the power of a demon, and am as vengeful to those who cross me.”

Sonja and Daron both knew that much of what Ban-Itos said was false; he was no demon, and would use his powers to slay only under extreme duress. Yet his masterful words and displays of the occult arts would serve as a caution to the bellicose among them and would save much time and trouble farther down the road.

Among the last to join them was Ostor and his savage band. Sonja and Daron both cautioned Ban-Itos that they could be troublemakers, but the old wizard was firm in his resolve to take on anyone who did not have an outright blood feud with any of the rest of their number. “If there are differences between the men of Ostor and the men of Bo-ugan,” he said in reply to their counsel, “then that will be settled in due order, and by my means, not by the men themselves. I intend to fight only one fight at a time.”

Sonja and Daron came to know Ban-Itos better during the weeks of recruiting in the city of Ikrahad, and both came to respect him greatly. Sonja nodded often to herself, pleased at many of the things Ban-Itos said, implied and demonstrated. Daron followed him as a pupil his tutor, and began to learn from the old mage his first lessons in the practice of sorcery, the talent which had lain dormant within him since his birth; and Ban-Itos was well pleased with his pupil’s ready skill and earnest purpose. Both had the same goal in mind, yet Sonja sometimes wondered if their goal were truly the destruction of Thotas; for she had noticed during past adventures that the avowed goals of sorcerers were often only symbols or cloaks for their true goals.

At the end of the month, then, Ban-Itos and Daron and Sonja and their rough-and-tumble army of free swords and hired mercenaries left Ikrahad. The elders of that city were not in any way saddened to see the lot of them gone; it was a prayer answered. When the last prancing horse had left the dust of its departure hanging in the air, incense was burned by the priests of Ikrahad in thankfulness—and in hopes that never again would such a rowdy and dangerous lot collect upon their lands to sully their city and threaten their daughters.

But Sonja, watching that army march from their encampment east of the city’s gates, felt a prickling of gooseflesh and even a stirring of pride. Three thousand strong they numbered—not a great army, but the largest force of fighters she had helped to assemble. Down the road to the east they tramped, toward the waiting steppelands, their ranks divided into a dozen motley contingents, the warriors singing the various marching-songs of their homelands, their eyes bright with the hope of plunder and glory. Sonja thrilled to the sight and the sound of them, even knowing the truth of the worst of them, and felt briefly the feeling that drives great leaders on to great conquests.

And so that army went forth from Ikrahad into the wide steppe, avid for gold and adventure, to free from the dark pall of sorcery a land they had never seen.

Ban-Itos’s mercenary contingents made their way east day by day, rising to move at dawn, dismounting to camp by the last rays of sunset. There were no outbursts, no dangerous displays of temper or anger. Morale was still good and hopes high, and the awe their magician-leader had instilled in them held them steady from any boisterous enthusiasm.

Then one day they saw, far to the southeast, a dark band of cloud that stretched in an unmoving low line along the horizon. The next day it loomed larger, and the following day larger still. It was uncanny the way it hung, motionless, its grayness darkening to a grim purple underneath, like an enormous lid over the land.

Daily, as they neared the river, and then as they made their way upstream toward Bo-ugan’s village, a gradually increasing tension took hold of the men of that army, and especially of Daron. Sonja could see it in him; he spoke only rarely, and when he did speak, it was mainly to Ban-Itos. At other times he would wander alone through the fields and the gentle hills after eventide, or steal at night from the camp into the darkness to meditate. He spoke to Sonja no more of his love for her.

Sonja and Ban-Itos, at these times, spoke often, for it was now, after the fighters were gathered together and subdued by Ban-Itos’s shows of magic, that Sonja’s military experience took over the direction of the army. But still she often asked the old magician’s advice on things beyond practical experience. And during one of their talks, a night away from the village of Bo-ugan, the old wizard said to Sonja, “I am on the road to my death.”

She was astonished. “What do you mean? Surely not defeat by Thotas?”

He shrugged. “Thotas may be the tool, but not the true cause. This lifetime is nearly done for me. It is time I went on to new things, other things.” Eyeing her sternly, “Do not tell Daron.”

“Of course not, wise one. But can his sorcery aid us if yours fails, or if you die?”

Ban-Itos replied slowly. “It will if he wishes it…if he can settle the war within him.”

“He has struggled with himself all the time I have known him. That hasn’t been all that long, but sometimes it seems that we have known one another for—years and years. There is something between us…”

“I see.”

“He loves me. And I, Ban-Itos—old wise one, I love him, and I am tom.”

“Your struggle is not new; it is old, very old. Both of you war within yourselves.”

Sonja’s heart went cold at the tone of his voice—not from anger but from apprehension. “What—do you mean, Ban-Itos?” she said, and feared his answer.

“You have lived before, both of you—and have known one another in lost ages. Many times, perhaps. Each lifetime seeks new answers to ancient questions.”

“We have known each other—before?”

“And you may not resolve yourselves in this lifetime either, Sonja. You may return again and again, both of you, into empires of the future. I have known such things. I am eager to die so that I may return and search out a woman I knew as a youth. She left me long ago, in a plague.”

Sonja’s heart was racing. “Ban-Itos…Ban-Itos…tell me more, please!”

He shrugged. “What more is there to tell, my Hyrkanian friend? I have told you all. Think on it—your mind will complete the outline of my words.”

Thus spoke Ban-Itos on the night before their entrance into the village of Bo-ugan—and Sonja was left with a strong sense of impending doom. But she did not know what doom she feared.

The dying sun showed briefly between the horizon and the lid of cloud overhead. Kites and crows circled high up in the gloomy, leaden sky. A breeze rippled the water of the river, ridging it like the ugly belly scales of some old dragon.

Trees were silent and leafless. The fields were parched and dust blew across them. No life showed in the fields, nor from the huts and entrenchments there.

But a few signs of life showed from the walls of Bo-ugan’s village. Soldiers, on guard. Sonja, Daron and Ban-Itos, riding at the head of their army with the cool wind whipping down on them, grew more and more uneasy.

“Something is wrong.” Sonja voiced it; all felt it.

“Aye…”Daron lifted his head, looked to the iron-gray skies, glanced across the wrinkled river at the ziggurat, huge and dark across the wasted grasses. His eyes met Ban-Itos’s. The old man nodded gravely.

When they came near the gate of the town, Sonja trotted her horse forward to answer a man on the wall. He called out: “Who goes there? What army is this?”

“I am Red Sonja the Hyrkanian,” she yelled back, “with Daron the Free Sword. We left from here not six weeks ago to gather an army—and we have returned. Open the gate, soldier!”

He seemed indecisive. Companions joined him on the wall.

“Open the gate, damn it!” Sonja repeated loudly, while Daron moved his horse forward beside her. “We must speak with Bo-ugan.”

Some of the men descended the wall. After another lengthy pause the sentinel called to Sonja, “You and your companion may enter; the army must wait!”

“What’s the matter with you? This army is for Bo-ugan!”

“Tell them to wait, Sonja of Hyrkania!” His voice was tense and stern.

Sonja glanced at Daron; he was disturbed. “Wait a moment,” he told her.

He rode back to Ban-Itos and the leaders of the groups of their army, and talked to them briefly. Then he came forward again, Ban-Itos walking behind him.

“Open the gate!” Daron called. “We three shall enter!”

The soldiers on the wall called down, and slowly the gate was pulled open. Sonja, Daron and Ban-Itos advanced. As they came through the gate, Sonja spoke harshly.

“What is the matter with you fools? These men are tired and hungry and they’ve come to fight for Bo—”

She paused, looking about the courtyard of the gate. It was desolate. There were no milling groups of soldiers or citizens, no animals even. There were but a few soldiers, no more than several dozen, looking wan and hungry. Dust whirled up under a sudden breeze; the sound of wind moving through broken boards and down empty alleys came to Sonja’s ears.

“What has happened here?” Daron asked one of the men.

“Death…” The soldier’s eyes were sunken deeply into dark sockets. “Death…”

“By sorcery?” Sonja asked him.

The man shrugged. “Our people began dying…Many of them deserted and moved on…Whole families left us, sailed down river. Animals are dying, children are dying. We have been fools…fools…

Sonja felt a stirring of anger. “How long ago?”

“Weeks. It began weeks ago—perhaps a month…” He was shaky on his feet; obviously, even speaking was an exertion for him.

Sonja drew a deep breath. “Take us to Bo-ugan. We must speak with him. Now.”

“He is ill,” the man replied in a sullen voice. “Bo-ugan is ill. He, too, is dying.”

“Damn you!” Sonja yelled at him. “Are you a man? Here is an army waiting in your fields to lay siege to the ziggurat and slay Thotas the sorcerer. Take us to Bo-ugan, soldier!”

He turned, unimpressed with her anger, to a man beside him. “Take them, then, to Bo-ugan,” was all he said.

The second man, also worn and tired, his face shadowed as with illness, nodded to Sonja, Daron and Ban-Itos, then turned and began to cross the courtyard towards a path leading into the village.

Sonja and Daron dismounted and left their horses in charge of the soldiers in the courtyard. As they entered the town, Ban-Itos said in a low tone to Daron, “The evil has unleashed itself and begun its destruction of the lands. We must hurry. Already we may be too late…”

Bo-ugan was in his house, in his council room—but lying abed, although dressed in his armor, and flushed with a fever. His eyes were dark, his arms limp and weak, his face wet with perspiration.

The room was dim, for the few oil lamps set about burned low. Their glow lent a sepulchral atmosphere, which reminded Sonja of small, dilapidated temples she had visited in her restless wanderings, where old women bowed all day long in vigils to deaf gods or in prayers to departed loved ones. Standing or sitting about the chamber was the barest number of Bo-ugan’s retainers: Iatos was there, but Agthor was missing, and so were many others.

As they entered, Iatos rose and stepped forward, obviously gladdened to see them. He took Sonja’s hands into his and pressed them with joy. But Sonja was disheartened to see that Iatos, too, looked very pale and gaunt.

“What has happened?” she asked, concerned. “Is Bo-ugan very ill?”

“He is dying,” Iatos whispered to her. “All of us are…dying.” He looked into her eyes, glanced at Daron, bowed his head curtly to Ban-Itos. Sonja introduced Iatos to the wizard, then asked again, “What has happened here? Is this Thotas’s work?”

Iatos sighed heavily. “A week, perhaps two weeks after your departure, the mood changed in the village. The men became very restive and demanded to make a final onslaught on the ziggurat. Bo-ugan could no longer command them; against his wishes they moved out, with Agthor to lead diem. Only a few of us remained behind, out of duty to Bo-ugan. The siege lasted only three days; the field was littered with our dead. Many sorcerers of the Crimson Sun were slain also—so it was claimed—but our troops could not take the redoubt, and what remained of them drew back. That night the winds began…glowing winds. Those in the village who were ill breathed those winds, and died. None would venture out of the camp. Boats bringing supplies never arrived, but corpses came floating downstream. Panic set in, and many fled. Madness took hold, and some here began slaying one another. One by one, each of us came down with fever. Bo-ugan was one of the last to suffer—his pride and anger held longer than most, but now he is ill, and the weariness of failure brings him swiftly to his end. He wishes only to die and hide in the bosom of the gods.”

Sonja glanced at the old chieftain. He seemed to be asleep; but now he roused himself, tried to lift his head.

“Voices…?” His own voice was brittle and weak.

A soldier bent close, whispered in his ear. “Red Sonja the Hyrkanian, with Daron and a seer. They have returned, my liege.”

“Sonja? Red Sonja?” he gasped, and tried to sit up.

Sonja approached Bo-ugan as his servant propped up his head with a pillow.

“Is that you, Red Sonja?” Bo-ugan whispered.

“It is I, Lord Bo-ugan. Daron is with me, and Ban-Itos—a wizard who knows how to defeat Thotas.”

“Defeat…Thotas?”

“And an army,” she assured him. “Lord Bo-ugan, we have returned with an army of over three thousand swords, all sworn to besiege the temple and bring you Thotas’s head.”

“An…army…”

Sonja’s heart broke, seeing this lion of a man reduced to such helplessness. What evil had wrought this? Thotas would answer for it! The anger that boiled up in her spilled out in a sudden loud command.

“Take him out!” she ordered the attendants in the room. “Lift him up and take him outside!”

They gestured weakly in protest. “Red Sonja, we cannot. He is too ill, too—”

“Lift him up! Take him out and show to him his army!” she yelled at them. “Do it now, or I’ll drag him out there myself!”

They consulted amongst themselves, but Iatos broke into their indecisiveness. “Take our chieftain to his army,” he ordered. “Are we so poor in loyalty that we will not lift up our lord so that he may view his troops?”

The retainers moved—four of them, struggling with the cot and Bo-ugan’s weight, though he was wasted’ with sickness. Daron and Sonja lent them aid, and the six of them carried the chieftain out and bore him down the long path to the courtyard of the town gate. Ban-Itos and Iatos followed behind. In the courtyard, Sonja ordered the gate opened. The soldiers there looked questioningly from her to Iatos, but Iatos nodded to them, and the gate was drawn open.

They carried Bo-ugan out onto the plain beyond his town’s western walls and propped up his cot so that he could look upon his army. The wind and dust blew upon him from across the river, cooling the perspiration on his face, flicking the blankets that shrouded him. Bo-ugan looked out on the lines upon lines of hard men who had come to serve him—mercenaries and brigands, homeless villagers and landless knaves. The steel of their weapons blinked and flashed in the dull sunset that gleamed beneath the gray, leaden clouds.

Tears rolled down his flushed cheeks.

He motioned to Sonja; she came near him.

“An army,” he whispered weakly. “But—I cannot lead them.”

“They will be led, Bo-ugan. They will be…unleashed.”

Daron stood behind her, staring at the war chieftain. Bo-ugan’s eyes rolled up at him. “And you have the weapon you sought…the weapon by which…to destroy Thotas?”

Daron nodded. “These swords, Lord Bo-ugan—and sorcery. I am a sorcerer. I did not tell you that. My father was a sorcerer. Let me say to you only that I left to discover the weapon that was my birthright. Thotas shall be slain and your land freed.”

Bo-ugan’s head sank to his chest. “I…believe you,” he said softly. “I believe you. And I know that Thotas must be slain.”

He reached out a hand; Sonja took it. Weakly, Bo-ugan pulled her close; she bent her head, her ear close to his lips.

“I am dying,” Bo-ugan whispered to her. “My body is full of pain. I am no longer a man, no longer a chieftain…I am weary, and wish to see my gods and my ancestors. I cannot lead this army; I have failed my people and myself. Sonja of Hyrkania…woman warrior…do not fail also.”

“Bo-ugan, I—”

“Do not fail,” he pleaded, gripping her hand tightly. “Listen—” He paused; he moaned; his body shuddered convulsively, and he clenched his teeth in agony. He gasped for air, and when he had regained his breath he opened his wet eyes and looked at Sonja. There was a vibrant light in those eyes—a new light, but it was fading fast.

“Lead them. Take them. Destroy Thotas.” He moaned again, then gasped and spoke more slowly, hesitantly. “Lead them, Red Sonja…Slay…” His eyes opened wider. “You are a woman, and yet—you are not a woman. What spirit possesses you? Why have you haunted my dreams since your departure? Why—?” He coughed, trembled. “I—do not understand you, woman of Hyrkania, woman of—of armor and sword. You come into my camp when we are fighting for—our lives. You are the equal of any of my soldiers; you—you leave and then return with an army…You deal with sorcery…You are—a white shadow with flaming hair and a sword strong as Mitra’s, and a temper to equal my own…” He groaned suddenly, violently, and his body twisted on the cot as pain ripped through him. “Gods…gods! I am dying, and I have failed my people! My duty…it falls upon you, woman-who-is-more-than-a-woman…But—who are you, Sonja of Hyrkania? Who…are you?”

More pain siezed him, and with a sudden wrench Bo-ugan half-threw himself from his cot. Sonja caught him and eased him back again, looking anxiously into his thin, worn face. A breeze blew up, fanning his damp hair—and his heavy hand, still holding Sonja’s, relaxed and fell slack; his head nodded once, and fell to one side. With trembling fingers, Sonja reached down and closed his lids over his eyes. The soldiers holding up his cot let it down slowly.

Sonja turned to Daron, seeing him through a mist, but noticed that he, too, had tears spilling over his eyelashes.

Ban-Itos stepped forward, placed a hand upon Bo-ugan’s still chest, and recited gravely:

“Man of earth, go forth now to your gods and teach them what lessons you have learned. Suffer no pain. May your spirit know only light and goodness. Breathe, O spirit, and escape to the Fullness, and know that you are an endless thing, and that your freedom now is your reward and a promise for your mortal lives yet to come.” He looked at Sonja. “Speak his name.”

She did not understand, but responded, “Bo-ugan…”

To Daron, “Speak his name, wanderer.”

“Bo-ugan…”

To Iatos, “Man of earth, speak his name.”

“Bo-ugan…”

“Now he is free. May the gods be pleased with him, and may his spirit know only light.”

But Sonja, remembering the dying chieftain’s last words, thought to herself, ’Aye, Bo-ugan, who am I? Who am I? Who am I?’

The mercenary army of three thousand took possession of the namesake town of Bougankad, now christened with the ashes of its chief, and that night Sonja gathered them in the main square. Amid the light of hundreds of torches, she stood upon a makeshift rampart and addressed them, Daron to one side of her, Ban-Itos to the other.

“In th£ morning we will go forth to make war upon the people of the ziggurat,” she announced.

Ban-Itos then faced the warriors and told them of the ziggurat—its construction, its secrets so far as he knew them. “Daron and I hold sorcery which can aid you,” he said, “but our sorcery’s main object is to annul the evil which Thotas wields, and whose source lurks in the highest part of the temple. And for us to reach Thotas and that evil, your swords will be needed to cut a path.

“You want money? Gold and silver? It will surely be there for the taking, within the temple, hoards and hoards of it, gathered over the generations by one of the world’s oldest and mightiest orders of sorcery. But you will be fighting sorcery, and you had best be prepared to strike quickly and trust no one. Corpses of the slain must be burned or beheaded so that they cannot be reanimated.”

“We will divide,” Sonja told them, “into four armies. I’ll explain your deployments in the morning. For the present, get you some rest, and be prepared for a slaughter on the morrow!”

She retired to Bo-ugan’s house, taking with her four leaders she had personally chosen from the groups of mercenaries. With them, and with Iatos, Ban-Itos and Daron present, Sonja—using Bo-ugan’s old parchment map—plotted her tactics.

It was midnight before she ordered her commanders to take some rest before the sunrise called them to battle; and it was later still that die herself retired to rest.

“Be strong,” Ban-Itos encouraged her. “The gods are with you, Red Sonja.”

“Are they?” She smiled wearily at him. “Well…I suppose, sooner or later, the gods might finally decide to side with me. The odds should fall in my favor one day.”

Ban-Itos left for quarters elsewhere in the house. Sonja watched him go, wondering who among them all would die on the morrow.

Iatos came to her and took her hands, smiling at her. “I intend to go along—”

“No,” she told him. “You cannot go with us. Someone must remain here. You and your men are weak and ill. You’ve already done your share. Please, Iatos.”

He looked at her with hurt in his eyes.

She told him, “Ostor and his men—they signed on. They may make trouble.”

“Ah—all the more reason for me to go.”

“All the more reason for you to stay here, my friend. Please.”

He understood, and nodded, and tried to smile at her.

Sonja asked Daron, “Should we dispatch riders in the morning to go to your father’s cavern and fetch us more gold and silver—just in case the ziggurat doesn’t happen to contain all the riches we’ve promised these troops?”

“The cavern is littered with traps, not all of which were rendered harmless by my father’s death,” he informed her. “Better to wait, to see how many survivors…”

Later in the night, after all but Sonja and Daron had departed for rest, she asked, “Will there be survivors, Daron?”

“Aye,” he told her. “Some will survive.”

“And have you the strength to survive—to battle the evil, if Ban-Itos fails?”

He regarded her levelly, smiled grimly. “I am fated to survive until my destiny is fulfilled—as are you.”

She sighed heavily in the night’s darkness and whispered to him, “Who are we, Daron? In the midst of all this, in the midst of our lives—who are we?”

The silence stretched out between them, and Sonja saw elusive shapes in the shadows. She was suddenly tired, too weary to ponder it all. She wanted to think no more. Yet, she felt the force of urgent questions somewhere within her; and then she realized that Daron was speaking.

“We are eternal. If you once realize, Sonja, that we are but illusions of our own consciousness, then you will have realized our eternal nature also. All that has happened and all that will happen is only a dream of ours—self-awareness is a gift that may be taken away. But what of a gift that we present to ourselves by the flickering light of that awareness? Once know the power and strength of your dreams, and you will know that this illusion of the world is but one aspect of some greater, all present and ever-changing Reality. And your belief—your spirit—your faith—shall be more powerful than the most powerful and most evil sorcery.”

She was weary. “Words,” she said, not understanding or refusing to understand.

“Truth,” he responded. “Truth. You know it, or you could not have survived this long.”

“Words…”

“Truth. You will feel it one day, Sonja.”

He did not protest his love for her, and she felt that was just as well. Sonja did not remind him that she loved him, either. After tomorrow…

But for now, it was late; they were both exhausted, and within a few hours they must go forth to battle Hell.

Chapter 9

The Battle for the Ziggurat

Dawn broke with a scream.

Sonja, who had been able to sleep only for a few hours, was in the main square when she heard it. Immediately those half-nodding mercenaries manning the walls called out in surprise and pointed across the river. Her senses awake on the instant, she ran across the ground, jumped on a stairway and raced up to the palisade. Down below, early risers and those roused by the scream began appearing in doorways, hurrying down alleys, collecting in the square.

“What was that?”

“Sounded far away, but too loud to be human.”

“Damn it, what are those bastards up to?”

A second scream cut the still air, and a third, human but horrifyingly amplified. From the walls, the source of the shrieks was readily discernible—a swiftly racing, gray-red cloud hurrying towards the village from the direction of the temple. It was screaming in obvious agony.

It, or the shadow within it. For as the thing came on, impossibly fast for a true cloud, the watchers could see within its heart a writhing shadow, man-shaped…

“Erlik and Tarim!” Sonja swore quietly. “The thing’s got a man trapped inside it.”

She -turned quickly at the sound of someone’s swift approach, face set in a half-snarl, fingers itching for her sword. She relaxed when she saw that it was Daron.

He paid no attention to her, however, but kept his eyes fixed on the cloud as it approached.

The thing was fairly large, and as it raced nearer, throwing its shadow over the gray weeds of the field and upon the cold waters of the river and the warped planking of the bridge, all eyes were upon it. It looked like a cloud of sea-foam, too heavy to be held up by the air. The shadow within it was surely a man, for it was a man’s screams that carried agonizingly, sorcerously intensified, to the ears of all the watchers on the wall.

Sonja and Daron both turned, necks craning, as the cloud passed slowly above them, then came to rest in the air above the main square of the town. By this time hundreds had collected below; as the shadow of the cloud swooped over them, they hurried out of the way, fearful.

The figure within the cloud, higher up than the tallest building in the village, could be clearly seen by this time. He was a young man, bearded and dressed in armor. He was revolving helplessly within the reddish, swirling foam, like a hunter’s quarry on a spit over a fire. “Help…me!” he shrieked, his arms waving frantically in the reddish mist.

Then he gave a loud, wordless wail.

Sonja’s stomach went cold at the sound. The red-gray foam of the cloud deepened to scarlet. The watchers below gasped in horror as thin trickles of blood began to drip to the earth. Then, suddenly, blood sprayed in all directions, spattering upon the ground, upon the bricks of walls and the wood of doors and roofs and window sills.

“Help …me!”

Sonja’s hand tightened on her sword scabbard as she stared up, helpless. “Give me wings,” she whispered despairingly to no god, no demon, no force within her knowledge. “Give me wings and let me avenge…”

Abruptly, the cloud dispersed, dissipating on a puff of wind like incense fumes. The victim groaned a last time as he dropped headlong and crashed to the ground, his bones snapping audibly.

Sonja hurried down the steps, pushed her way through a crowd of men and stood above the corpse, which lay in a mangled heap, rivulets of blood creeping out from beneath it and collecting in small pools. She felt eyes upon her. Looking up, she saw across from her Ban-Itos—and, beside him, Iatos, trembling with weakness and rage, leaning upon a tall staff.

Iatos looked up at her. There were tears on his cheeks.

“One…of ours,” he told her sadly.

The mercenaries were grumbling and whispering, staring at the corpse. Sonja cast her eyes on them, reading in their hearts the stirring of fear—the terror of an unclean death, the horror of death by sorcery.

But Daron, beside Sonja again, said coolly, “They do not understand—do not realize that warnings like this will not frighten us away, but only make us more determined to attack.”

Sonja glared at the far heavens, the snarl back on her lips. “Then we’ll make the bastards understand,” she replied fiercely. “Every hell-priest hiding in that ziggurat will soon understand what we are and what they’ve tangled with. By Tarim’s horns, we’ll carve their carcasses and glut the hells with their rotten souls!”

She paused, breathless, surprised at her own intensity. Was the madness of the land infecting her? But even if that were true, the stupidity, the uselessness, the waste and the violence—and the cruel contempt shown in the manner of the young warrior’s death—cut into her soul like a poisoned knife.

“We’ll make the bastards understand,” she said again, and stalked off.

Daron looked after her, then shared a look with Ban-Itos.

“The star,” muttered the old wizard. “Even now it feeds…Mitra grant that the hate it generates in us may soon be turned against it!”

Sonja rode at the head of the leading company as the army made its way through the gray, scrubby fieldland in the midmoming gloom. Flanking her, and now beginning to part in their own directions, were the three other divisions, each led by strong and competent mercenary commanders. They would make no attempt to disguise their intentions—two were to attack the base of the redoubt, two others the upper levels from the mountain; for now, they merely rode on, each horse’s step bringing them implacably closer to sorcery, battle, blood and death…

“Kill,” had been Sonja’s final order to them. “Whoever or whatever you come across, if you don’t recognize it—kill it. I want that hell-hole bathed in blood, and every devil-serving sorcerer in it dead.”

Ban-Itos, on horseback for the first time, rode alongside Daron, directly behind Sonja. Behind them, keeping their distance from the two dark-robed sorcerers, came the mercenaries—ten and twenty abreast, stamping the dry stubble of the fields under their horses’ hooves; hardbitten men, tight-mouthed, scowling with hatred, eyes burning with the lust to feel flesh and bone cloven beneath their swords. The spirit of the land was upon them, crowding out even the lust for plunder.

“Kill. Kill. Whoever or whatever you come across.…Kill.”

As they rode, Ban-Itos and Daron began to recite strange words and cut the air before their chests with hand motions. Sonja did not notice until the monotony of their litany caught her attention. She swerved in her saddle; the creak of leather, the clink of her armor carried far in the silent, breezeless morning. She looked at Daron, a question in her eyes.

He stared at her—stared through her, as if unaware of her presence—and continued his chanting and gesturing.

Suddenly Sonja perceived a breeze blowing up behind her.

The breeze grew stronger, became a wind; the wind waxed stronger until it was blowing all around her, but it did not touch her; instead, it was sending a long wall of dust, dead grass and small bits of scrub before her and her armies. It was a screen, a shield to obscure their advance from the watchers at the ziggurat. None of the approaching thousands of mercenaries was caught in the billowing dust and dead grasses; but before Sonja’s division, and before the advance lines of the three other wide-sweeping companies, a huge semicircle of dust and debris gathered, swirled and moved on ahead.

Through the obscuring dust, Sonja spied the massive walls and tiers of the ziggurat looming. They were very close now—passing by the line of huts and forts originally built by Bo-ugan’s troops as the first line of offense against the temple. Their horses’ hooves echoed hollowly in the deserted ways; the whistle of the magic wind was a welcome distraction.

As they came closer—as Sonja was about to turn and ask Ban-Itos and Daron to lift their dust-shield so that her men could drag forward the ladders, diggers and weapons lying about in the field, abandoned by Bo-ugan’s men—as the walls of the ziggurat bulked ever larger and more threatening, and the old entranceway the villagers had made in the outer wall of Thotas’s stronghold came into view—the earth trembled.

Sonja thought at first that it was due to the winds and the debris, or to the motion of her horse.

But, no, the earth trembled!

Immediately to her left, .men screamed. Horses neighed in panic. Through the veil of blowing dust Sonja caught glimpses of soldiers thrown into the air, horses hurled back, then saw the earth rearing up like a wall against them.

“Mitra and Hotath!” She whipped out her sword as a dark shadow dropped over her.

“Stop the wind!” Ban-Itos cried to Daron, throwing up his arms.

The dust and debris began to settle. As the veil fell away, Sonja and her troops saw ranging in a huge halfcircle about the front and sides of the ziggurat—giants.

Giants of the earth—solid, earth-molded monstrosities many times the size of a warrior, pulling themselves up out of the ground, pushing forth rough semblances of heads and mighty arms, leaving huge raw pits in the earth behind diem and moving ponderously upon the mercenaries, smashing them down with their heavy rock-studded arms.

“Ban-Itos! Daron!” Sonja cried, as more and more screams from the crowded and confused troops sounded in her ears. “Draw back! Hear me! Hold your ranks! Fall back!”

Then she was nearly thrown from her horse as a mighty concussion ripped through the ground beneath her. As she fought to hold onto the reins and manage her mount, she saw off to her right a sudden eruption of the earth as another mighty wall of ground reared itself up and threw a black shadow on the soldiers before it. Thirty men and their horses were heaved back to topple on the hundreds behind them. Frantic screams rang out, and the crashing of armor, the crack of splintering bones…

Sonja whirled her staggering horse about and looked for her two sorcerers. “Do something!” she yelled.

Ban-Itos and Daron had dismounted. To Sonja’s bemused gaze, they were calmly gathering up small clods of earth and crushing them in their hands, as if they cared nothing for the monsters all around them. Then Daron, while Ban-Itos spilled some kind of powder on the broken earth, pulled a bow from his quiver and bent close to his master.

The shrieks, the roars, the noise of the erupting earth became deafening. Sonja was again nearly thrown from her horse as it sought desperately to keep its feet; she dismounted, feeling safer on her own two feet. All around her pressed the bodies of men and animals, thrown close together by the impact of the earth’s madness, then pulled apart by further tremors. Sonja cast about and saw that now the even lines of her mercenaries’ advance were in ruins, nor amid the chaos could her soldiers hear her voice. Those troops the farthest in the rear were the least troubled by this new sorcery, and were doing what little they could to maintain order or aid fallen comrades. But again and again great curling waves of earth fell forward to bury twenty and fifty men at once, throwing into panic those who escaped being crushed. Swords—bows—slings—all were useless; several of the earth-monsters bristled with the blades and arrows their small adversaries had bravely hurled at them; but such weapons troubled them not a whit.

Sonja looked up at the ziggurat. In a wide window of its third level she noticed a knot of figures—perhaps half a dozen blue-robed priests clustered around a tall, thin, dark-robed one.

Thotas?

While the earth rocked and screams rose as if to deafen the gods, Sonja ran to an archer near her and yelled above the din, “Aim at those bastards in the window—the one in the center!”

With a grunt, the mercenary unlooped his bow, nocked a shaft to it and, holding his breath for a fraction of a minute while the earth held steady beneath his wide-planted feet, aimed and let fly. The arrow sped as a blur through the air—but as Sonja watched, it came near its mark, then was deflected by an abrupt gust of wind.

The wind blew up quickly, and within a few heartbeats Sonja, Daron, Ban-Itos and their army were standing amid a tremendous downpour that had exactly the effect the magicians wished: Thotas’s earth-giants, unable to maintain their forms against the deluge, collapsed slowly into muddy heaps. All that remained of them were bits of broken blades and shafts of arrows, still thrust deep into sodden mounds of inanimate soil.

Loud cheers went up from the soldiers. Sonja, wiping back her wet hair, smiled in relief at Ban-Itos and the strange young sorcerer she loved.

“Come ahead!” she yelled to them as the shouts of the soldiers rose and the storm subsided. “We’ll take the place!”

Daron hastened behind her, and Ban-Itos followed more slowly as Sonja led the charge across the muddy plain towards the old entranceway of the temple.

“This way!” she called to the men around her. “Follow me!”

As she and the first of the troops splashed through the mud toward the opening, shadows appeared within it, and Sonja pulled free her sword to meet them.

Corpses—the corpses of soldiers—guarded the entranceway to the ziggurat.

Mercenaries—villagers—whoever had been left mortally wounded or dead within Thotas’s walls as the last of Bo-ugan’s men had withdrawn, now awaited them, reanimated by hellish sorcery and flung, as the second line of defense, against Sonja and her swords.

“Cut them apart!” she screamed through the diminishing rain. “Cut them apart or they’ll never halt!” As a crowd of warriors surged in behind to reinforce her, she leaped towards the first of the undead waiting in the very shadow of the wall of the ziggurat.

She had fought them before—here in the ziggurat and in the wild swamp of Osylla the witch-woman. They disgusted her, these foul things with the stench of death about them and their awkward movements, their unseeing eyes and the sorcerous ability that enabled them to find enemies and attack them. But Sonja had long ago lost her dread of them, for she knew what they were, and concentrated only on rendering them permanently powerless, out of the reach even of Tnotas’s wickedness.

She beheaded the first undead attacker easily, knowing that she was only disabling dead flesh, not killing it, for the dead could not be killed. Animated corpses had nothing in common with the spirits they had housed in life, a thing she had learned hard years before. But Sonja knew many of her mercenaries would hesitate to strike corpses that had once been fellow warriors, and that moment of hesitation would doom them.

“Hack them down!” she bellowed to those behind her. “They’re not human! They’re things! Sorcerers have stolen their souls! Hack them apart! If they kill you, you’d be like them!”

Such fearsome warnings provoked her mercenaries to attack mercilessly, but die corpses came on and on—scores of them—and Sonja began to understand the depth of Bo-ugan’s despair at having left so many dead in the Temple, and for no success at all. She cut and slashed and thrust at the things, shoving her sword through mottled bellies, severed grinning heads, shattered skulls with staring yellow eyes, disabled one after another of the slow-moving automatons of death, becoming more and more disgusted and desperate as each new wave of the things came on.

“They’re thinning out!” she yelled. “At them! We must get inside! Daron—Ban-Itos—can you do nothing?”

The sorcerers, too, were caught in the maelstrom of walking corpses and hacking blades. Daron had drawn his steel and was accounting for a number of the corpses. But Ban-Itos held back, then moved ahead again as Sonja and her troops gradually cut their way into the first rooms of the ziggurat.

But as they pressed forward, their light was lost; all the torches used by Bo-ugan’s men were long-since burnt out or extinguished. Sonja felt an instant’s panic.

“Torches!” she yelled to the men behind. “Bring light—before we start killing each other in the dark!”

Light came, and with it they saw that the corpses were nearly demolished. Panting, Sonja took a fresh grip on her sword and pushed ahead. She saw a final undead warrior approaching her. Furiously she swung at it; the lopped-off head smashed to the floor, and the body flopped sidewise.

“Here!” came the deep voice of a soldier, and in a moment a blaze of light filled the room. Others flared up in quick succession, and suddenly there were five torches burning above the crowd of mercenaries.

It was the small room through which Sonja and Daron had passed many times when they were mercenaries with Bo-ugan’s troops. This place had been an office; it had smelled of sweat and wine and had resounded with the swearing, jokes and laughter of rude fighting men. Now the tables were overturned, the chairs smashed and a welter of broken, shattered corpses stretched from wall to wall.

Sonja, breathing deeply despite the stink, held out a hand to receive a torch, then moved wordlessly ahead, through the opening that led down the corridor and into the deeps of the temple’s first floor. Behind her came Daron, several of the fiercest mercenaries and Ban-Itos. More of the soldiers plucked up courage to follow a little behind their leaders.

The torch threw its light ahead of her, showing the way clearly. Sonja remembered the passage; she and others had fought hard for it, foot by foot, against all manner of hell-spawn. Now the route was clear; she walked ahead with no horrors confronting her. But she was suspicious.

At the corner where she had once stopped a reanimated corpse permanently and killed a sorcerer, she held her torch out ahead of her and slowed her pace—peering around the comer, poised, sword arm shivering, ready for anything…

The way was clear.

“Damn,” Sonja whispered under her breath. “Stay by me, Daron. I don’t trust this.”

Down the branch corridor Sonja moved, slowly and carefully, and close behind her, looking around nervously, her troops. All was silence. Die torch revealed only the vacant corridor and an iron door, standing open.

“It is some trap,” Sonja muttered. “Stay alert. Keep your eyes open, they’re up to something.”

They passed through the door and still farther down the corridor, walking one wary step at a time, listening, watching…

Through another open archway—and then, far ahead at the end of the passage—a shadow moved.

“Careful,” Daron whispered.

Despite his warning Sonja hastened her steps, anxious to do battle with something she could see, holding up the torch to see what was there, expecting corpses or demons or—

No—only a solitary robed figure.

He was far away, standing at the end of the narrow corridor—a corridor so long that it must, Sonja guessed, stretch through the center of the ziggurat and into the very mountain itself. Shadows clung to him, darkness stood behind him. But he called out no warning—made no move—neither advanced nor retreated.

Sonja began running towards him. Daron called out to her: “Be careful!”

“Fools!” came the shriek, echoing down the hall.

Now Sonja and the soldiers behind her saw the figure clearly—a tall, thin man in a blue robe, blocking the end of the corridor which opened into what seemed to be a great, open space behind him. Glaring at them, he stretched out his arms and pressed his hands against the walls on either side of the passageway.

“Fools! Fools! You have accomplished your doom!”

So saying, he tensed his outstretched arms, his fingers flattening on the stone of the walls. The mercenaries began to curse and grumble uneasily at the sudden sounds of grating rock, spilling dust, trembling walls.

“Damn!” Sonja swore. “He’s bringing down the—”

From above, dust and pebbles spilled on her from sudden cracks, and there came the immense groaning and scraping of rock sliding upon rock.

The central corridor was buckling at the ceiling, the walls being pushed apart by the incredible strength of one lone sorcerer. The cracks above were widening, and rock fragments flaked down on the mercenaries crowded into the hall.

“Fools! Fools! Now you will all die!“shrieked the sorcerer, eyes blazing with yellow light as he heaved more powerfully than ever against the walls.

A sound like thunder. Sonja glanced behind to see a great loosened stone topple down from the ceiling and crash into her crowd of men.

“Damn you to the hells!” she howled at the sorcerer, and ran ahead.

“Sonja!” Daron called out. “We can—”

But she knew there was no time—no time for Daron to call upon his resources, no time for Ban-Itos to press his way forward through the mercenaries and the falling rubble and come to her aid. There was only Sonja in the lead, armed with a sword and a torch.

“Fools! Fools!”

“Die, serpent-spawn!” she screamed, and with all her strength hurled the flaming torch.

The sorcerer yelled some pronouncement in an unknown tongue, letting go of the walls and gesturing quickly with his arms. The torch seemed to strike him, exploding into a wave of colors so intense that Sonja had to avert her eyes for a moment. When the glare dimmed, she looked again, expecting to see the sorcerer reduced to a pile of ashes.

But he was still standing, covered with the glow of the torch—standing in a nimbus of shimmering fire, as though the torch flame had become an airy shield around him. But he was no longer pulling the temple down upon their heads.

“Damn you!” Sonja howled, gasping for breath. “Damn you to—the hells!” She half-crouched, pulled her knife from its sheath in her boot, lifted her arm to fling—

Then someone gripped her wrist strongly, and stopped her. Sonja growled and twisted about—looked into Daron’s eyes.

“Useless,” he said in a low voice. “Give it to me.”

Perplexed, Sonja nodded. Daron took the knife from her, then carefully advanced the last few steps towards the sorcerer at the end of the corridor.

The robed sorcerer was smiling contemptuously, as though he believed the young warrior approaching him to be the greatest of fools.

Daron halted very close to the priest’s flaming shield. He felt the heat of it upon his face as he stared into the mystic’s eyes, all the while holding Sonja’s knife in his outstretched hand, the point aimed squarely at the man’s forehead.

The sorcerer’s smile faded a trifle; he seemed to need to concentrate. Then his flaming shield heightened in intensity, flared out until it was nearly touching Daron’s armor.

Daron did not move. He stared at the mystic—and the man lost his smug smile entirely.

“You call us fools,” Daron whispered to him. “You’re the utter fool. Look at my eyes. I am the son of Dark Odurac, and I bring to you his curse of a thousand deaths.”

The priest opened his mouth to scream, but Daron in the same instant opened his hand. The knife shot forward and sank hilt-deep into the man’s forehead, piercing the fiery veil and driving effortlessly into bone and brain.

The sorcerer collapsed, the eerie light about him evaporating. For a moment he writhed on the stone floor and then went limp, exuding a bluish vapor in his death.

Daron turned, his face a blank, and saw that Ban-Itos had managed to push through the crowd of mercenaries and was standing beside Red Sonja.

“Now we can go forward,” he said. “Follow me…”

The corridor, as Sonja now saw, debouched onto a huge white room—monstrously huge, and illumined with an eerie, brilliant light of unknown source. High above her, as she looked up from this glaring white expanse in the center of the mountain, she saw bridges of stone. They arched and crossed one another, level upon level of them—twenty or thirty bridges, evidently connecting each floor of the ziggurat’s interior and spanning the black heights to distant dark squares—entiyways to further mysterious regions within the mountain.

Daron pointed above. “There,” he said, indicating the highest bridge, “is the way to the uppermost house of the temple. That is where the star would be.”

Sonja began to step forward, to the edge of the wide white plain—but Daron held her back.

“No. It is not what it appears to be.” He stepped ahead himself, turned briefly to face Sonja, Ban-Itos and the eager band of soldiers, then shot an arm out before him. His fist crashed through some invisible barrier—and instantly the vista of a white, glowing floor vanished.

Sonja grunted with astonishment. A wave of disbelieving gasps and curses rose up from the mercenaries. The illusion shattered by Daron’s power of magic, what they clearly saw now was not a white plain but a pit—a huge, gaping gulf that stretched before them, its far edges lost in the dimness beyond boiling mists and rising plumes of smoke. Slender fingers of red touched the walls of the huge pit, as though from lights or flames far below.

Sonja came close to see. Daron held out an arm as if to prevent her from being pulled forward; indeed, Sonja felt a senseless tug, an insistence that, though the illusion was gone, she should step forward into the pit.

“Its deeps,” Daron warned her, “are lost in nothingness, falling to some endless convolution beyond space or time. It is a hole in the world, created by the will of Thotas and the energies of the star. Merely breathing its vapors can make men into mindless things. We must hurry.”

Sonja made a face, looked up. “Then, how to get up…there?” She pointed her sword at the base of the first high, black bridge of stone.

“Aye.” Daron nodded beyond her. “Stairwells.”

She looked. Cut into the rock were stone stairways that curved and angled upward, letting out on bipad landings which led to the arching, buttressed bridges curving out above the enormous crater.

She faced the troops behind her. “The stairs!” she cried. “Head up! Up! And slay anyone or anything that gets in your way!”

Chapter 10

Death in the Ziggurat

As Sonja dashed up the first flight of stairs, sounds of battle came to her. Surprised, she paused and stared towards the wide bridges high above, and saw some of her own mercenaries—evidently from the two contingents that had attacked the ziggurat from the mountainside. However it was that those troops had broken in, there were swarms of them on all the upper bridges spanning the bottomless pit, battling against hurrying mobs of sorcerers and walking corpses. The clash and clangor of swords sounded distant and dim, muffled by the huge vastness of the cavern’s interior.

As Sonja realized that she beheld the onslaught of her mercenaries against the wizards, she saw occasional objects falling and spinning past her from high above, vanishing into the steaming depths of the pit—heads, limbs, entire bodies, lost weapons—all falling over the ramparts and speeding past her into the gulf. The awfulness of such a fate for any human being made Sonja clutch at the rim of the staircase as she stared upward.

“Die! Die!” came the distant shrieks of her warriors as swords flashed and armored groups high up surged back and forth in the flow of combat. Sorcerers and soldiers, screaming, tumbled in increasing numbers over the stone edges of the narrow bridges and disappeared into the depths.

“Taaran’s thorns!” muttered Daron.

Sonja glimpsed the head and chest of some sorcerer, trailing the ragged edges of a bloody garment, and a moment later his lower half, both parts tumbling slowly, trailing entrails as they dropped into the steaming hell-pit.

She raced up the stairs, followed by Daron and Ban-Itos and their mob of swords. Gaining the first level, they found it unguarded; on the second and third levels, still no resistance. Their legs ached and their hearts pounded with the strain of their ascent, but at every level they saw only an entranceway, unguarded, and men fighting on the long arches of higher bridges—while far below, the seething pit flickered red as corpses and screaming men fell into it. Sonja thought the brief fiery flashes that burst from the deeps of the pit revealed hints of strange beings down there—wide, flame-colored eyes, huge tentacles, vast wings. Hell was in that pit—

The fourth level, then the fifth—and by the time Sonja started toward the sixth level, she was gasping for air. Daron grabbed her arm, and they ran on together. As they reached the sixth level, some of the sorcerers on the bridge turned and noticed them. Howling, they turned and hurried toward the landing. Sonja, Daron, Ban-Itos and a dozen others were already starting up the stairs to the seventh level when the sorcerers intruded upon those behind them. Those men turned to meet their charge and beat them back upon the bridge, thus allowing their companions to continue up the stairways.

The eighth level, then the ninth—and Sonja ran squarely into a line of walking corpses crowding the landing. Pulling herself together and taking a deep gulp of air, she jumped forward and beheaded one, lopped the arm off another and knocked them both over the low wall of the landing and into the red-lit void. Behind her came her mercenaries, charging and yelling and glad at last to be in on a fight they could understand. The slow-moving undead went down before their hacking blades like wheat before the scythe—Sonja’s warriors falling upon each dull-eyed corpse, blades chopping and flashing, until every one was hewn into pieces and kicked over the walls.

“Upward!” Sonja cried. “Upward!”

Her chest burned as she dashed up the next flight. Old Ban-Itos was still with her, almost gliding up the stairs, his eyes glowing as with flame. Sonja marveled at his strength and endurance, and knew that it could be maintained only through sorcery.

The tenth level. Three sorcerers were there, seeming startled by the abrupt intrusion of Sonja and her companions. Daron notched an arrow in his bow as he came onto the landing, and let fly. The shaft pierced the face of one of the robed wizards, the point protruding out the back of his skull, the feathered end sticking out above his screaming mouth as he twitched backwards and dropped into the void.

His brothers raised their arms menacingly, beginning a conjuration. Sonja leaped ahead, sword up—but incredibly, before she could reach them, old Ban-Itos was in front of her, drawing from his robe a small, flat stone carved with symbols. He flung the object toward the sorcerers. They drew back as the thing suspended itself in the air, swelling and sprouting a dozen shining tentacles. In the next instant those tentacles enveloped the sorcerers, heaved them up and hurled them over the wall; their screams rose up, dwindling with the distance of their descent. The shining globe and its tentacles vanished, and upon the causeway fell the small, flat stone of Ban-Itos’s magic.

The eleventh level, the twelfth, the thirteenth. At each landing priests and walking corpses appeared and Sonja ordered her men to fight them off. Thus her troops gradually diminished in number as she, Daron and Ban-Itos continued their ascent.

“The door to the High Temple!” Daron yelled, pointing to it as they climbed onto the fourteenth landing.

It was above them, clear and gaping, two stairwells up.

“Hurry!” Sonja urged, casting a glance behind her.

Her company had dwindled greatly. How many had moved out to battle priests and corpses on the bridges? How many had died? How many might survive?

The fifteenth level—and a row of formidable-looking sorcerers approached them from the bridge. Seven dark-robed temple-priests, older and sterner than the blue-robed ones on the lower levels. “You go no farther!” one of them called out, lifting his hand. A blue glow took shape in the air above his cupped hand.

An arrow from Daron’s bow caught him in the chest. The sorcerer shrieked wildly, sank to the stone, then sprawled forward, dead. The blue glow vanished.

But the six remaining joined hands and began to chant in unison. Again a blue glow formed—menacing, like lightning gathering to strike. Daron nocked another arrow as Ban-Itos pulled from the sleeve of his robe a small stone vial, and cast it on the floor before the sorcerers. Smoke poured up from it as it smashed, and then Daron’s arrow shot through the smoke toward the line of robes.

The arrow became transformed in the smoke—became a gleaming ribbon of some phantasmal substance.

“Now, upward!” Daron urged Sonja and the troops. “Upward!”

Sonja took to the stairs, turned and glanced back. The ribbon had surrounded the six priests and was closing in on them. The blue glow of their energy fought to hold it back, but it shrank ever smaller and glittered ever brighter. The mercenaries hurried up behind Sonja; enthralled by the sorcerous spectacle, she stepped aside and let them run past her.

Daron looked up at her. “Hurry! Ban-Itos and I can hold them. Get to the High Temple!”

But as she turned to follow the last of her troops, she heard Ban-Itos gasp, “Daron—aid me! They are strong!”

Sonja watched in apprehension as the blue force of the six began to push back Ban-Itos’s ribbon. The old wizard’s hands were up before him, glowing with a charged energy, quivering as if he were straining intensely.

Daron dashed to Ban-Itos’s aid—but he was a moment too late.

Ban-Itos screamed as the blue light around the six suddenly burst through the ribbon, reaching like murderous hands toward Ban-Itos’s face. Daron laid his hands upon the old wizard, and the shimmering ribbon closed again around the six; the blue glow dimmed, and the sorcerers sank slowly to the stone, dying, their flesh turning livid when the ribbon touched them. Three were down, then four—five…

But, evidently dizzied by the loss of the strength that Ban-Itos had drawn from him, Daron let go of the old wizard and stumbled back a step or two. In that moment the strongest of the six, in a last frantic attempt to save himself, shrieked insanely and broke through the ribbon. But as the shining lash snapped across his face, it blinded him; and then he was a man no longer but a walking corpse, for the flesh crumbled from his skull like ash, and then sloughed from his body till he was a walking skeleton, grinning hideously, his tattered fingers groping before him: for somehow he propelled himself forward, with his last sorcerous strength, directly towards Daron.

Sonja screamed and jumped down the stairs, sword out, even as Ban-Itos groaned and, exhausted, dropped to his knees.

The corpse of the sorcerer fell upon the still-dizzied Daron; its bony hand smote Daron’s chest and sank through the mail-links. Daron cried out. There was a new smell of flesh charring.

Sonja raced across the landing, brought down her sword.

“Die, die, die!” she howled.

Her blade neatly severed the dreadful hand from its arm. The sword hissed and smoked as it touched the thing that had been a man; and with the flat of the blade she knocked it over the parapet of the landing into the void.

Daron fell on his back. Where the hand had touched his chest there was now but a smudge of ashes, ringed by the broken links of his mail. Sonja dropped to her knees beside him. Ban-Itos, reviving slightly, crawled over to them.

The old wizard stared into Daron’s eyes. “Gods, gods!” he swore. “This was a mistake, this should not be, it was not fated—”

“Daron, Daron!” Sonja pleaded with him.

He groaned, and his eyes opened, but when he tried to draw a breath, he grimaced with agony, and tears of pain rolled down his face. Black blood, mixed with the ashes on his chest, oozed from beneath the tom mail. Two white ribs stared out from the ragged muscles and flesh.

“Mitra, Mitra!” Sonja sobbed. “Ban-Itos, save him!”

But the old man only looked at her, and tears came to his eyes.

“Mitra!” Sonja breathed.

She rose to her feet and looked behind her. Three soldiers yet waited on the stairs; they had seen and heard what had happened, yet they stood straight when Sonja’s eye fell upon them, and awaited her orders.

Sonja looked at them and at the great, dark doorway just above them. The landings and bridges came to an end at the top of this flight of stairs.

She looked to Ban-Itos. “There are rooms up there?”

He nodded.

“We must move him into one.”

“Red Sonja, Thotas and the star are—”

She turned from him, beckoned to the soldiers. “Come! We must carry him up!”

Three of them took hold of Daron and lifted him up. They were as gentle as they could be, but Daron groaned and fresh blood poured from his ghastly wound.

“Up!” Sonja hissed at the men.

Carefully, they moved him between them, bearing him up the last flight of stairs. Sonja followed and, behind her, Ban-Itos. At the top of the flight the landing opened into a corridor that stretched away in the direction of the peak of the ziggurat. The stonework looked new here. Sonja moved ahead of the three soldiers, came to the first of several doors off the main corridor and tested the latch.

It opened. She glanced inside. It was just a room with a cot, table, chairs, bookshelves. A priest’s cubicle.

“In here.”

They carried Daron inside and laid him on the cot. Ban-Itos did not follow, but stood guard. Sonja watched Daron as he lay gasping in the dimness of the chamber. “Light a torch,” she ordered her men. One of them knelt, and there was the noise of flint and tinder; and a flaming torch was thrust into a ring on the wall. The orange light flickered across Daron’s pale face.

“Now, go,” Sonja muttered to them; when she did not immediately hear the shuffle of their retreating boots, “Go! Go! Leave me with him!”

They backed out, astounded at her anger. Sonja followed them until they had crossed the threshold, then slammed shut the heavy wooden door and shot home the bolt. Then, turning, she dropped her sword to the floor and, with tears crawling down her cheeks, walked to Daron’s cot and fell on her knees.

Could even ghosts find a home here, in this desolate atmosphere, this ziggurat of death reared over a noisome pit that led straight to hell?

Sonja felt the chill of the World of the Dead steal over her, settle upon her as an icy cerement. Did her heart still beat? Had she indeed lived the life she remembered? Were there any answers anywhere that were true answers, that anyone could find amid the madness that life and death offered?

What error had been made that Time could not be retraced like a path, and Truth be taught to tread it?

She knelt by the body of her beloved, listened to his labored breathing and felt the ache of his wounds in her own body. Her soul festered in anguish. Sonja stared into his half-closed eyes and looked for a hint of stars, the promise of some return. But there was only pain, and a longing for release.

Mitra!—but an emptiness had blossomed in the heart of the world!

She realized now that the solace of a hundred possibilities had preoccupied her mind, both obviously and unconsciously, during all the long hours of hardship, fear and peril that she had shared with Daron, and thus she could avoid facing the truth in her heart.

And now Daron was dying.

Daron, the only human being Sonja had ever met who understood, by the very nature of his own existence, the solitude that estranged her soul from the souls of even her friends; and with that estrangement yet also understood her loyalty to the entirety of the human race. He had understood.

The depth of the pit beneath her was no greater than Red Sonja’s sorrow.

She knelt closer, and felt his faint breath on her cheek. Her lips trembled.

“Daron…?”

His hand moved feebly toward Sonja’s, missed, groped and finally found it. She moved her hand into his, held it strongly—strongly—holding onto Daron.

“Daron, can you hear me? Listen to me—”

He gripped her hand, weakly at first, then with more urgency. His eyes opened frilly and looked into hers; in the glow of the orange torch-flame they were hollow.

“Daron…”

“Sonja, I—” He coughed. Fresh blood ebbed from his wound, spilling quietly down his side.

“Quiet, Daron. Rest.”

“I will not live. I am—dying, S-Sonja…”

“Quiet, Daron!”

“Sonja, I love you, and I am a fool.”

“Quiet, Daron, quiet!”

He smiled; it became a grimace. He sighed, closed his eyes, opened them again. Her face was close to his, her breath warm on his face.

“What a fool I am,” he whispered hoarsely. “What was I trying to prove? And yet…”

“Daron, keep still. The soldiers are taking the ziggurat—they’ll defeat Thotas. I’ll get Ban-Itos in here; he can help you; he can cure you—”

“No one can cure me. I’m dying, Sonja. And I want to die. Can you understand that? Or believe that? I can’t, yet I—”

“Please, Daron, please. You’re hurt, but Ban-Itos cai^—”

“I want to die, Sonja. I must—because of my father—I owe it to my people, whoever they are, wherever they are. I owe it to you…”

“Daron, you can’t say that!”

“I’d only bring you harm, Sonja, if I lived. Don’t you know that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“I care. I’m the—son of an evil sorcerer. And you—”

“Mitra, I don’t care!” she cried, tears coming to her eyes. “I’ve been the fool, Daron—not to know how much I loved…Mother of Mitra, I swear on the thrones of the gods that I’ve never felt this way before in my life. Never, never!”

“Sonja—”

“I love you, Daron! By the gods of the heavens, by the devils of the hells—Mitra help me—I—I love you!” Her hand pressed his; he clenched it and gasped in pain as his wound again gaped and ran with blood. Sonja sobbed, bending her head to his shoulder, wetting his face with her tears, touching her cheek to his. Then she lifted her head, stared deeply into Daron’s burning, hollow eyes.

“I love—”

She moved her mouth to his, kissed him deeply and then drew away, sobbing, wiping tears from her face.

“Gods, gods,” Daron moaned, trying to lift his head. “I had the world…

Suddenly overwhelmed with all that was in her, Sonja threw back her head and stared at the smoky ceiling of the chamber. “Mad gods of Creation!” she cried out in a choked, trembling voice. “I love this man, I love him! Give him back to me!”

“What have I done?” Daron moaned, his hand’s grip weakening as his life ebbed. “This…Sonja, I didn’t intend this. Not…”

“I love hun!” Sonja shrieked to the uncaring ceiling. “Don’t let him die!”

“Sonja…”

“Daron, Daron!” His hand was limp and cold in hers.

“I—didn’t wish you pain—” He coughed blood. “We had the world—Sonja…”

“Daron, no! No!” She rubbed his hand frantically, stared into his closing eyes, kissed his forehead, his eyes, his lips.

His unmoving lips.

His hand, limp, was utterly strengthless in hers.

“No!” Sonja howled. “No/”

She rose to her feet, bent over him and took his face in her hands. For a long moment she studied him with tear-blurred eyes, stared at him. She felt herself sinking into an abyss, a cold abyss of despair where something horrible was waiting—

Something feeding itself on her pain and anguish.

“No!” she cried furiously, groping for her sword, feeling a wild desire to slay the cruel gods who had created the worlds. Instantly the cold abyss and the feeling of horror subsided…

“No,” she whispered, half question, half declaration. Then, regarding again the body of her lover: “I did wrong—I loved you from the moment I saw you, but I refused to acknowledge it. And now I’ve lost you…You’re a sorcerer’s son, but I love you, Daron.” Again her sorrow threatened to overwhelm her, and again the abyss yawned. “In the name of Mitra, open your eyes and look at me! I’m losing my mind, Daron. For a moment I felt a demon feeding on my pain!”

He did not answer, could not answer, did not open his eyes or respond to the kiss of her warm lips.

“Daron!”

Again, the horror of something waiting to feast on her anguish—something not far away. Something within the ziggurat.

“Gods of the hells!” she screamed at the dark ceiling, the tears starting down her face again. “Why would you not save him for me?”

Then she crumpled up beside him on the cot, buried her head in her arms and sobbed.

She knelt there a long, tear-filled, soulless time, feeling herself damned by her pride and by her own fate.

She wept until she could weep no more, until her head and sides ached, until her whole body ached with all the pains she had ever suffered. And she ached with a love she had not realized until too late, and that was the bitterest ache of all.

Until a blue light filled the room.

A blue light.

She blinked her sore eyes and looked up from where she knelt, and saw the strange being of her destiny, halfman, half-woman, glowing with the blue radiance of the deep night of her fate.

“Mitral”

“You are your own fate, Sonja of Hyrkania.”

“What in the name of—?”

“Call on none but yourself, seek none but yourself, arrest not the motion that impels you forward on the ordained road.”

Astonished, Sonja whispered to the being, “Who are you?”

“You are unto yourself alone, Sonja of Hyrkania. The past opens up in you, the future unfolds before you. You are your own fate, Red Sonja.”

Sonja leaned back, still kneeling, but now an anger grew within her: for the fate she saw behind the prophecy was one of blood and sorcery, of terrible solitude and love found only when lost.

“In the name of Mitral” she yelled at the thing. “Tell me who you are and why you plague me!”

“You chose your path as it was chosen for you. You are the path you have chosen, Red Sonja. You are the choosing of that path.”

“Tell me who you—I”

The blue radiance increased abruptly, and Sonja had to avert her eyes. She fell silent, overwhelmed by weariness, and the aftermath of anger and loss. She listened numbly as her doom was read out to her; and she thought, ‘Why must I be told? Most human beings are permitted ignorance, and thus they may hope.’

“You are your own fate, Sonja of Hyrkania. You claimed your sword as your strength and your heart, yet you are more. You are unto yourself. Damn not the gods for the path you chose and are, Red Sonja. Long ago you chose to follow it and live it.”

The blue radiance vanished, leaving her alone in a dark room with the corpse of her lover and a solitary, mocking torch-flame.

Gods of the gods! It was Iatos who had said to her, “I am weary of always being the survivor.”

“Why damn the gods for the path you choose and are, Red Sonja?”

“Daron—Mitra, help me.”

“You are your own fate, Red Sonja of Hyrkania. “

She was aware of the immense, waiting silence of the All—and then, of a pounding on the door.

Sonja rose slowly, tired and drained. She approached the door, lifted the bar, stood back.

The door was pushed open, and Ban-Itos stood there. He entered quietly, then closed the portal again. He looked at Daron, then at Sonja. Her brilliant red hair was disheveled, her face white and tear-stained.

“He is dead?” the wizard asked in a whisper.

“He is dead, and I loved him…

Ban-Itos looked upon her with the gaze of the mystic. “Then, you will avenge him.”

They stared at one another, breathless—and then Ban-Itos held out his arms. Stumbling forward, Sonja moved into them, hugging the old man as he embraced her strongly in return—the first time since the death of her father that she had allowed any man thus to comfort her.

Then, respectfully and affectionately, Ban-Itos held her back, stared into her great blue eyes and said softly, “We have not yet gained the High Temple. Thotas is there; he still lives. Take the ashes of Odurac, I beg you, Sonja.”

Feeling like some ghost intruding upon the memories of a family she had loved but no longer belonged to, Sonja turned from the old wizard, crossed to the cot, bent over the still form of Daron and, lifting open his tom robe, drew from his belt the leather sack holding the ashes of the dead sorcerer.

Then she looked at Daron’s composed face, damp and gray, and watched it for a long, tense moment. Leaning over, she kissed him, drew back and looked into his features again, then closed his eyes and smoothed his wet hair. Finally she turned from him, knelt and retrieved her sword. The pouch containing Odurac’s ashes she secured to her own belt.

Ban-Itos went to the door and opened it. There was a crowd of mercenaries in the hallway, weary and battle-tom, but ready to follow Red Sonja where she might lead them. Sonja walked forward, staring at her troops, counting them, pleased to see that so many had survived the battle on the stairs, that so many had followed her so far; pleased with them, her soldiers, despite the sorrow for Daron, her lover.

Then she turned to Ban-Itos and said to him grimly, “If it means death for me, then let it be so. I will avenge him.”

“Daron should not have died,” said Ban-Itos, shaking his head. “It was my time, not his. His stars foretold no disaster. It is as though he were under a curse that took the doom and placed it upon him.”

“Aye, a curse.” Sonja’s eyes grew hard, determined. “Osylla…”

Then she strode forward. Her troops moved aside before her, making a passage. Red Sonja of Hyrkania passed between the ranks of her warriors, leading the way up the corridor into the High Temple of the ziggurat, and to the sorcerer who ruled it, and to the Star of Doom.

Chapter 11

Thotas

Halfway down the corridor that connected the temple with the monstrous cavern, they came upon a pile of corpses, hacked and charred.

No—not all corpses. For eyes still dully flickered there, arms still moved awkwardly and fingers, red-stained and sticky, still trembled. Scowling, Sonja stood before the thick carpet of bodies which stretched from wall to wall. She recognized them by their clothing and armor as Ostor’s barbarians. Evidently they had made their way here hoping to loot the High Temple, leaving others to fight the priests upon the bridges, but had encountered steel and blasting sorcery. Among them lay the bodies of a few blue-robed priests.

As she made to step through and over the corpses, determined at any cost to reach Thotas, one of them weakly called out her name. Startled, she searched the tangle of carnage to see which grim warrior in leather and mail deemed it more important, dying, to call out to her than to make peace with his gods.

“Red…Sonja…

She looked, and saw him. His face was turned toward her, and blood seeped from his nose and mouth, matting in his beard and mustache. He was helmetless, and gore was congealed in his long, tawny hair.

“Red…” It was Ostor, chief of brigands, loudmouthed commander of an outlaw army, dying on the 171 floor of a sorcerers’ citadel, reduced to a broken remnant of his former belligerence.

“Ostor,” Sonja said. “Why didn’t you wait?”

“What—what madness have we fought?” he whispered bleakly as his eyes began to cloud over. “You led us into hell. All my men—dead. Bolts of fire—blue smoke—beings from all the hells…This is not earth…I am dying in the midst of some nightmare—Enkidu curse you!”

“You were a fool,” Sonja hissed at him, “who wished to gain all the plunder for yourself.”

“There is no gold,” Ostor gasped. “There was never any gold. There is only death—and flames, and these—monsters in human guise.”

“You’re a fool, Ostor. And you’re dying a fool’s death. You have only your greed to blame.”

“I—I was led into a trap. You led me—to death.”

“You are your own death, fool. You led men when you couldn’t even master yourself. You sought to cheat us all.”

“You lied to me. There is no—treasure here.”

Sonja shrugged. “You don’t know that. These hell-priests may have a vast wealth of gold stashed away in their vaults. But they can smelt it in hell’s pits for all I care!”

“Woman, you—are mad!”

“And you’re a fool.” Sonja turned away from him. “Slay me, slay me,” Ostor whispered strangely, as his last shivering gripped him. “Slay me—do not let me die—by a sorcerer’s wounds.”

Sonja grunted at him, “What difference, Ostor? You’ve lived by plunder—sent hundreds of innocent steppe-villagers to their doom. You’ll bum in the hells till the end of the world, no matter whether I slay you or __ » no.

His eyes closed; he grimaced with huge pain, shuddered briefly—and then went limp.

Sonja regarded him somberly, wondering at her own feelings. What was this hate that made her taunt a dying enemy, even one as cruel and barbaric as Ostor? Was it the madness of the star growing upon her? Then, the sooner her work here was done the better: for Daron had promised that some would survive. There would be some few remaining, grateful to breathe untainted air again. She did not care if she were to be one of them or not.

Looking up from his body and over the pile of corpses, she lifted a foot to begin her advance—and paused. Nine blue-robed men stood before her, across the carpet of corpses—pale, bald men, motionless, staring at her with their yellow eyes.

She glowered at them, tensing to charge to the attack should any one of them make so much as the shadow of a gesture.

But they did not move. The one in the forefront asked in a quiet voice. “You are the leader of these barbarians?”

Sonja answered carefully, “I am.”

“We would speak with you.”

“Then speak. Or act—whichever you wish. It will mean your deaths, regardless.”

“We do not wish to die, by your hand or Thotas’s. Nor do you wish to die, as you shall if you try to oppose us. Let us have no more death.”

“What game is this?” Sonja demanded. She sensed Ban-Itos coming up from behind her to stand by her side.

“No game,” the bald priest assured her. “If you will help us destroy Thotas, we will protect you from him.”

“A trick,” Sonja snarled.

Ban-Itos muttered in a low voice into her ear: “I think not…”

“We wish your pledge of aid,” said the priest in front. “We will not harm you.”

“Hundreds and thousands lie hacked and burned,” Sonja reminded him, “fallen into your Pit, slain by your sorcery—”

“We could have destroyed you as you came across the plain had not our energies been drained. Thotas and his stone have stolen our strength—and much of yours, also.”

Sonja’s eyes flickered; her nostrils quivered.

Ban-Itos told her quietly, “It is true. The being in the stone is indeed an Ajar-Alazwat—a Feeder-upon-Pain, which lives and grows by draining the energies of living things. We would have been demolished on our approach had not the thing within this temple held these men back. I know now our determination would not have been weapon enough against their sorcery.”

“But your magic, Ban-Itos—and Daron’s—”

“Not enough. These men are strong. I soon realized that something was draining their energies, directing them elsewhere.”

“Then it has all been a sham.”

The sorcerer in the forefront broke in. “No sham. Our strength is truly weakened, red-haired woman. Thotas and the Ajar-Alazwat have stolen our defenses. Our Master lusts madly after limitless power; he is destroying himself. We will serve him no more—and we can aid you if you will aid us.”

“We do not need your aid,” said Sonja. “We have a weapon.”

The leading sorcerer did not answer immediately; two others stepped forward to confer with him in whispers. From behind her Sonja heard angry grunts and calls from her troops. “Kill them now!”

“Waste no more time!” “Let’s cut up the bastards!”

“What weapon?” asked the leader of the robed priests.

Sonja did not want to say, but Ban-Itos answered. “The ashes of the sorcerer Odurac, whose son was slain by your fellows.”

The leader nodded with respect; those behind him seemed impressed. “You slew Odurac and gained his earthly ashes?”

“I did,” Sonja told them.

The leader bowed his head. “Those may indeed destroy Thotas. Please—aid us now. Time is very important. Thotas and the Ajar-Alazwat are in combat.”

“In combat?” said Sonja. “I don’t understand. How can—?”

“In conflict. The Pain-Feeder means to destroy Thotas at last and return to the heavens. We must aid its escape.”

Sonja was astonished. “Ban-Itos,” she asked, “can this be true?”

He nodded gravely. “And if so, then the star is its own master. Thotas found it weakened and imprisoned it, but it has reasserted itself. It (flight finally be strong enough, after ten years of struggle, to steal Thotas’s power and escape his control. All the power of all the lives in this Temple, and in the surrounding land, have been slowly drained and absorbed by this thing, so that it might work free of Thotas.”

The leader of the robed ones nodded. “You speak with knowledge, white-beard. As your lands have been weakened and devastated, so have our lives and souls. We are reduced to a fraction of our strength. The Ajar-Alazwat—feasts on us…”

“Enough!” called one of the priests. “They will not agree! We cannot go back without protection—we are doomed! I will not die drained of spirit!” And, stepping away from the group of his brothers, he drew a dagger from his belt, plunged it into his belly and threw himself forward upon the floor.

Sonja gasped; she moved toward him, looked down. It was no trick; the point of the dagger protruded a hand’s width from the man’s back.

“Gods…” she breathed.

“We will not allow you to slay us,” said the first speaker, “but we will not allow Thotas or the Pain-Feeder to steal our souls, either. We will slay you and ourselves unless you agree to help us against Thotas to free the Ajar-Alazwat. It is the only hope for any of us.”

Sonja deliberated.

“If you do not,” the speaker reminded her, “the being will very soon release all its energy to destroy Thotas—it will not care if it destroys all the world as well. None of us will escape.”

“You waste time, warrior-woman!” cried another priest. “You will damn all of us!”

And from the soldiers behind her, “To hell with their tricks! Kill the sneaking bastards, I say! Kill ’em all!” In the same instant a knife was thrown towards the group of sorcerers. It sailed past them and clattered harmlessly on the stone floor; but the sorcerors drew back, scowling, and two or three threw up their arms in a way Sonja knew only too well as the preface to sorcery.

But Ban-Itos was quicker than any of them. He threw up one arm as a shield from anything Thotas’s men might do, and burst out angrily, “Damn you for a fool!” His eyes locked onto the man who had thrown the knife; he loudly intoned, “Eliazu inamu!”

The man shrieked as his hair suddenly exploded into flames; he threw himself this way and that, until his frightened comrades threw a cloak over him and smothered the fire. When he crept out from under the cloak again he had suffered no worse than the loss of his hair—and his anger. Quietly he stood in the ranks of his fellows, his eyebrows singed off and his scalp gray with ash.

“Fools!” Ban-Itos yelled at them. Then, facing Sonja, his temper still strong but his voice lowered, “I fight beside you, Sonja, but new strategies are now necessary. The destruction of the Ajar-Alazwat is all-important. Lead the way, with these temple-priests beside you—or I shall abandon you.”

She looked into his eyes—the eyes of the man who, scant minutes ago, had looked upon her with compassion and tenderness.

“Daron—” she whispered painfully.

“Daron would not have wasted time arguing,” he told her. “Like me, he would have read these men instantly, and known. Believe them, Red Sonja. Believe me.” Listening to him, knowing him, she nodded. She stepped up and over the corpses, holding out her hand to help Ban-Itos follow. Facing her men, she said,

“Follow—or die hellishly, like the rest of them.” They began to follow, grumbling in their incomprehension but still loyal to their flame-haired leader. The hairless man rubbed an ashy hand over his face and followed last of all.

Sonja approached the robed sorcerers and saw now that all were fairly young men. The leader asked her, “May I feel the ashes of strong Odurac?”

She pulled the leather pouch from her belt and held it up.

The man did not touch the pouch but held his open palm close to it, as though feeling emanations of power or heat which Sonja could not detect. Then he looked up into her sapphire eyes and nodded. “Come quickly.”

Hurrying down the corridor, they came to a doorway of black hardwood decorated with bronze, gold and silver. The sorcerers silently led the way inside. Sonja and Ban-Itos followed. Some of the soldiers also followed, until no more could fit into the entranceway.

For the temple chamber was only a moderate-sized cubicle, the entrance hallway opening into it through the southern wall. As the sorcerers ahead of her fanned out to either side, Sonja at last looked upon Thotas, although she did not see the star.

The high priest was in the middle of the chamber, sitting on a stone altar, hugging the corner of a huge iron obelisk taller than himself, which rested on the stone. All around him, at the base of the altar, were bodies—robed bodies, their skins as glistening and transparent as gelatin, their organs and systems all in view, throbbing and pulsing.

“Gods of the gods!” Sonja whispered in astonishment.

“Their souls belong to Thotas,” Ban-Itos whispered to her. “He feasts on them, while their bodies slowly die, Mitra and Hotath! How many must have died this way?”

“Hundreds,” said a priest next to him. “We were fools. We’ conjured victims from everywhere, forced them into this temple, even scavenged the bowels of our ziggurat to bring souls back from the tombs—all to feed Thotas and his Ajar-Alazwat, and only so that they could destroy us…

Glaring at Thotas, Sonja suddenly realized that he was insane. He did not appear to hear them or, if he did, cared nothing for their words.‘Sitting on his altar, he stared at the people around him as though they were a long-expected audience at last come to visit him.

“I am free!” he shouted, laughing at them stridently. “Free!” Suddenly his face twisted with anger, and he barked, “You cannot slay me! I am free! I cannot be destroyed. I rule all eternity! Insects, ghosts—begone!”

He gestured grandly. Sonja flinched against possible sorcery, but not even a breeze issued from his arm’s motion. Yet the men on the floor around him, the undead victims with glistening transparent skin, groaned profoundly.

Sonja shuddered. Yes, Thotas was insane; and he was filthy, dressed in stinking robes that he seemed not to have removed in years. His forked beard was greasy and coarsely matted; his teeth were yellow and brown; his skin glowed with a strange, unhealthy radiance. Dark stains of dry blood were on his fingers, around his nose and the hollows of his eyes.

“Free!” he cackled at them all, turning his head this way and that. “Free, free, free—for eternity!”

The robed man next to Sonja turned and faced her. “Little time is left,” he said. “Give me Odurac’s ashes.”

Transfixed by the horror in the room, she produced the leather pouch and handed it to him without question.

He opened it, looked inside, pronounced a solemn prayer, then passed it around the circle to the others.

All nodded quietly, repeating the prayer.

Then the chief sorcerer, beginning a chant which was taken up by the other robed men, slowly began to circle the stone altar and the gleaming translucent bodies, dropping a thin trail of ashes as he did so. Thotas raged and screamed when he saw what was going on, but seemed too weak or ill to drag himself from his throne. The other sorcerers approached the altar, standing just outside the line of ash.

As the ring of ashes was completed, it began to glow, and Thotas began to howl insanely, clutching at his iron obelisk as if in devotion, babbling and raving with mad abandon.

Sonja watched, astonished, transfixed, at the web of sorcerous energy which was being woven. Thotas, held captive by the power of Odurac’s ashes combined with the desperate determination of the rebellious priests, seemed able to do nothing but rant and shriek and howl in anguish as he died.

Died slowly and horribly.

His glowing skin swelled in gigantic pustules and burst, and evil-colored blood flowed from them. His features dissolved as Sonja watched in horror.

“I am free, free!” he howled. “Master of eternity!” Fetid smoke gushed from his mouth; his voice was no longer human. The chant of the circle of sorcerers, which grew louder and louder, began to drown out his screechings and howls, which dwindled as his human form melted away.

“Free!” It was little more than a hoarse whisper.

Thotas was at last reduced to a puddle of muck on the flat surface of the altar, oozing foully over the edge and dripping to the floor below. The poor tortured things at the foot of the altar shuddered and rolled sightless eyes, and died, grateful for their merciful release.

The mercenaries in the hallway, frightened, had begun to edge away, to crowd back into the hallway and move down it. Some had glimpsed what was occurring; the remainder did not wish to. There was no gold here, and Thotas was dead. The deed had been accomplished in some hellish way by Sonja the Hyrkanian and her old sorcerer. Those bubbling screams told enough. Better they flee from this hell-chamber, to seek loot elsewhere… .

Ban-Itos turned to Sonja and whispered tensely,

“Better we go—”

She stared, gaze fixed on that iron obelisk. “Ban-Itos, what is in—?”

“No, no, Sonja—you can not leam every mystery! Let us go before this entire ziggurat—”

“What is in the obelisk, Ban-Itos? Is it—?”

“Sonja!” He gripped her arm strongly to draw her attention, to force her eyes to his. “It is the star, the star, and we have no power over it—!”

“It is a foul thing—it caused the death of—!”

The obelisk trembled where it stood. Sonja narrowed her eyes. She was imagining things. But the sorcerers encircling the altar began to back away, and their droning incantation for the first time hesitated.

Ban-Itos darted forward and snatched up an object from the floor—the pouch that had held Odurac’s ashes. It was not quite empty. Hurriedly the old wizard returned to her side, tying the bag to his belt.

“This may yet aid us. Hurry—we must go!”

“No!” Sonja snarled. “First, that thing must die!” She glanced behind her to find that all save a handful of her men were gone. To her grim, questioning stare one of the soldiers said, “They were afraid.”

“They left to find the loot you promised us,” said another.

“Tarim’s curse!”

Ban-Itos faced the men and, gripping Sonja’s arm again, yelled at them, “Begone! Flee from here or die a worse death than Thotas’s!” Their eyes widened in astonishment; they moved back, disturbed at the intensity of his command, then turned and hurried down the corridor.

Sonja glared at him. “In Tarim’s name, what do you mean by—?”

“The star!” he yelled at her. “The star!”

Sonja jerked her head, stared at the obelisk. “It is evil!” she yelled, against a loud humming that was beginning to fill the room—a hum emanating from the obelisk…

“It is a seed from the heavens!” cried Ban-Itos urgently. “It knows nothing of us. It feeds because it must. Its nature is evil. Thotas trapped it with his magic, but he is dead and now, quickly—perilously quickly, it frees itself—we must be gone before—!”

Sonja turned again and stared at the altar—just as the obelisk, trembling on the altar, rocked back, forward, paused—and toppled to the chamber floor amid the ghastly corpses. It split open with a reverberating crash, a huge metallic sound that rang across the stone room.

“Gods of the gods!” screamed the head sorcerer. “The thing is free!”

The humming sound in the room grew louder—louder—and then ceased suddenly, and a sound as of a wind rose and broke into a whining wail. Ban-Itos, croaking something unintelligible, tore off his cloak. Sonja began to back away, one step, two steps back—and then the sorcerers surrounding the altar stone shrieked horribly as a glaring light erupted in the room.

“Gods of the—!”

Ban-Itos, averting his sight, threw his cloak over Sonja’s head and body, knowing that she would not turn herself away in time. Sonja heard a vast hissing sound, as if a white-hot meteor were dropped into the ocean—but sensed no reek of steam or smoke, no flash of heat. Then she felt the stones beneath her feet shudder. Impatiently she ripped Ban-Itos’s robe away from her face—and saw him protecting his eyes from the glare in the center of the room.

BE GONE FROM HERE!

Sonja froze in terror. That vast, terrible voice thundered, and yet was soundless. It was not a star, not a stone. It was more than a demon; it might have been a god or goddess of some unimaginable world far from this one.

Instinctively, she too shielded her eyes. But as she turned away, her gaze fell on a polished silver shield in one corner of the room, along with other armaments taken from Thotas’s human sacrifices.

I AM FREE!

“Hurry, hurry!” Ban-Itos, one hand still shading his eyes, tugged at Sonja’s arm.

But she was staring at the polished surface of the shield, sucked into vistas of eternity which no words, or dreams, or earthly experiences had prepared her for. Images flashed before her so quickly that there were no heartbeats between them. A vision of the Primal Gods…

I AM FREE!

Sonja felt herself pulled back. A hand grasped her chin, yanked her eyes away from the deadly silver shield. She saw Ban-Itos’s face.

“Sonja—run!”

“What is it?”

“Some minion of the gods beyond the gods. It is free now, Sonja. Run!”

I GO NOW FROM HERE!

“Hurry!” Ban-Itos yelled at the still half-mesmerized Sonja, dragging her from the room. “Don’t look back!”

She stumbled but, feeling the familiar human strength in her legs, turned and hurried down the corridor. The dream—or vision—was gone, and in its place Sonja now felt only urgency.

That thing—what was it?

Pulled on by Ban-Itos, she ran.

“Ban-Itos!”

“Hurry, hurry!” He pushed her ahead of him, but Sonja braced her feet and held back.

“The—others?” she gasped.

“Dead! They looked upon—it—as it awoke!”

The floor beneath their feet trembled.

“Erlik and Tarim!”

“The Temple is collapsing!” Ban-Itos yelled at her. “That—Thing—must be going, leaving earth. Hurry, Sonja, hurry—or we’ll fall into the pit!”

Even as he yelled, Sonja reached the first balcony rail and saw, as she ran, the uppermost of the many spanning bridges collapse, ripping apart and falling into the void. The soldiers on it, seeking chambers to loot, were hurled down with it. They screamed as they fell; but the quaking earth was louder.

“Mitra!”

Walls shuddered, brick and stone particles rained down upon her and Ban-Itos. Sonja hurried down the first stairwell, with Ban-Itos behind her, racing away from the High Temple of the Star.

Chapter 12

Remembrance and Revenge

There was no reality for her as she hurried down those winding stairwells, other than her feet on stone, faster and faster, barely touching the steps—she and Ban-Itos only. The walls around them trembled and shuddered. She heard upper portions of the stairway collapse into rubble behind her; and once, glancing aside, saw vaguely and peripherally another bridge crumble and fall into the red abyss.

No memories, no pain, no thought—only the animal urge of survival in her, to keep racing down the stairwells one after another until she struck the last corridor and finally daylight.

As the thing behind her, high above her, whatever it was, sought to escape again into the great soundless void of the gods, into the vastness where humanity was nothing, where nothing lived but shadows in the gulf.

One last flight of stairs—and something huge collapsed behind her. Ban-Itos? But, no, miraculously he was behind her still, his strength of sorcery pushing him on at her mad speed, but he seemed to float more than to run. His hand brushed her shoulder; the feel was electric and seemed to give her strength. She threw herself around a corner and down the last few stairs and, never pausing, rushed across the entranceway, the vast pit of hell to her left now leaping with flames each as tall as the ziggurat itself. She glanced up; most of the bridges, 184 where she could see them, had broken through in the middle; rock rained down around them. All that showed from the uppermost reaches was a brilliant yellow glow that pained the eyes.

“Ban-Itos—!”

“Behind—you!” he gasped, pushing her shoulder weakly. “Keep running! The thing is—growing!”

The entire mountain was trembling perilously with the ziggurat’s convulsions. Sonja half-turned at a sound so tremendous and powerful that she seemed not to hear it, but to feel it like a blow.

Then she was in the corridor and running through it, passing by its trembling walls on aching legs and numbed feet, and knowing—knowing that within the next step the walls would crumble and fall upon her and she would be crushed, buried under a mountain of rubble that time itself would never dislodge.

She kept running, passed through the arches with their open iron doors, darted to the left and hastened with her remaining strength, forcing herself to the tunnel’s end, to the rooms, to the daylight of the outside world…

Behind her, a grunt. She paused, looked back—and saw Ban-Itos sprawled on the ground.

“Wizard!”

“Hurry on…hurry…!”

She turned and ran back to him, knelt. The trembling walls on either side spit dust, and gravelly dirt fell on her from the weakening ceiling.

“Run!” Ban-Itos gasped.

“On your feet! On your feet, damn you!” With a strength she had not believed she still possessed, Sonja grabbed Ban-Itos under his arms and heaved up. He gasped. Rocks tumbled to the shuddering floor.

“I’m…up…Now—run, woman’.”

“You can’t—!”

“I’m a sorcerer. Run!”

Startled, Sonja looked up as larger rocks dropped. She turned and ran down the last short corridor—

I AM FREE!

The thunder of falling stone intensified. She raced into the collapsing room where she and Daron had once traded jests and dashed through it, half-pausing to glance back—saw Ban-Itos hurrying…hurrying…

FREE! FREE!

She threw herself forward, ran out into the plain and hastened with weakening steps over the damp grasses, over the sprawled mounds of earth that had once been entrenchments and earth-monsters.

A mighty explosion behind her shook the ground.

Sonja gasped, fell to her knees, turned—to see Ban-Itos’s robed form groping forward through smoke and falling ruins.

“No!” she screamed with all her remaining strength. “Ban-Itos!”

Then she was thrown forward by the shock and hit the ground on her belly. Her face was buried in the mud, and for a moment she thought that she would suffocate. Her heart pounded as though it were about to burst.

Sonja, dizzied, sat up, rubbed her eyes and mouth free of earth. She got to her feet and staggered, then found her balance. She shook her head, and her brain gradually stopped swimming, and her breathing steadied. The tremendous explosion from within the mountain still reverberated, but slowly the dust cleared from the entranceway of the temple.

Sonja saw the body, lying on the ground just outside the fallen rubble.

Ban-Itos.

She staggered towards him. “Wizard—?”

He moved. He was alive!

Sonja ran to him as he tried to pull himself up. She dropped to her knees beside him, seized his hands. He craned his neck, looked up at her. “Hurry…”

“We’re free, Ban-Itos.” She half-smiled, wearily.

He shook his head. “The whole mountain—We must still get across the plain…”

“Erlik’s bowels! Will the world explode?” She helped him up, and together they staggered away, painfully and slowly, from the collapsing temple. Only she and Ban-

Itos had escaped, as far as she could see. There were a few horses, farther out on the plain; they were the only living things to be seen anywhere beyond their two selves.

Ban-Itos gestured to the animals, and two of them approached. Wearily he and Sonja mounted them, urged them into a trot, leaning awkwardly in the saddles as they moved across the field, the temple looming behind them.

And the temple fell, with a rushing, reverberating, roaring pandemonium of noise. The horses bolted, and Sonja and the wizard did not try to check them, only keeping them together, and clinging to their saddles.

They were halfway across the field when the wind began.

Sonja felt it suddenly at her back. When she swiveled in her saddle to look behind, she saw that a brilliant yellow column of light was billowing from the crest of the trembling mountain, extending upward toward the darkening skies.

I AM…

“Faster!” Sonja gasped to her horse. “Hurry, damn it!”

She and Ban-Itos raced across the field, their mounts galloping flat out, sweat shining on their flanks, as the shimmering column of light shot up gigantically into the sky—free at last, away from Thotas and the earth-magic that had held it prisoner, returning once more to its vast reality beyond the clouds, into the void of stars, beyond all mankind’s gods…

Sonja and Ban-Itos had just gained the gate of the village when the full brunt of that great wind smashed into them. Trees, rocks, thatch from roofs were torn free brutally and whirled high into the air, sent spinning swiftly away, became mere diminishing blots in die sky. There was no one on the wall to open the gates for them, but that did not matter; the buffeting winds broke in the doors of the gate and literally blew Sonja, Ban-Itos and their mounts into the courtyard.

The massive winds crashed against the walls of the village. The waters of the river, caught in the immense force, rose up in a shimmering wall and smashed upon the ground. Huge bursts of spray reached through the broken doors of the gate and struck Sonja and the wizard; the walls around them shuddered, threatening to cave in beneath the pounding water and the immense wind.

Birds were swept through the skies like pebbles. Great trees cracked and broke; some were torn up whole and whirled aloft. The thatch and wood huts of the original village by the river were sundered and flattened and dispersed like straws. The newer stone buildings erected since the long war began were split apart; their mortar crumbled like damp sand.

It all happened so swiftly that even as Sonja and Ban-Itos were knocked from their terrified horses and frantically grasped one another by the hands to stay together, skidding along the ground and trying to gain enough purchase to anchor themselves, it was over.

Crashes and groans sounded from things dropped suddenly from the air, and then silence descended.

Sonja lifted herself from her belly, stared at Ban-Itos, looked to the walls. They were at best cracked and tilted inward; in places directly across from the field they were flattened. Sonja realized that she and Ban-Itos had been blown like dust-motes along the ground of the courtyard. The sorcerer’s plain robes were ripped and shredded, and her own limbs were scratched and burnt from the friction.

Human corpses lay all about—those few of Bo-ugan’s people that had yet lived at dawn when Sonja’s army marched forth. Not one remained to greet Sonja or Ban-Itos on their victory—if victory it had been. Their corpses mingled indifferently with the carcasses of dead animals and with stones and branches and broken bits of homes and shreds of household goods. Everything had been swept as by a giant broom against the far walls of the village compound.

But then a glow in the sky caught Sonja’s attention.

“Ban-Itos…”

He, too, looked and saw.

The column of fire, the pillar of light, the star, was hurtling upward into the cloud-covered, dusk-darkened sky. It was gone a moment after they noticed it—gone into the clouds, into the stars beyond the earth. All that remained was a thin tongue of fire that rose straight up from a smoking pile of ruins that once had been the Temple of the Crimson Sun.

From this distance, the best that Sonja and Ban-Itos could see was a shadowy confusion of settling dust. An entire wall of the mountain showed itself raw and clean—the outer portion of it having shorn off to collapse upon the ziggurat and into the hell-pit.

Exhausted, sore and bloody from many small wounds, Sonja got to her feet. Ban-Itos also rose up. Farther into the village a few stone buildings yet stood, for they had not had to withstand the brunt of the demon wind. Toward these the two survivors now made their way. Sonja, zombielike, walked the path through the town, and Ban-Itos followed her. By the dim gray light the expiring day afforded them, each found a cot in one of the buildings; at present, sleep and forgetfulness was all they asked.

Sonja stripped off her mail and her leathern tunic; naked, she crawled beneath the thin coverlet of the cot and instantly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. If hell had awakened that night with a thundering legion of monsters to devour the world, Red Sonja of Hyrkania would have slept right through it.

But then, had she not already seen hell awaken?

She awoke late the next morning. The sun was shining through the open window of the building. It took her a moment to recollect where she was; then she realized that the cloud cover was gone. She rose and looked for Ban-Itos.

He was not in his cot. But Sonja heard sounds from outside. Putting on her tunic and sword, she limped out and found the old wizard in the middle of the path, tending to a fire and roasting over it a ptarmigan. Beside Ban-Itos lay a bow and a quiver of shafts.

He looked up and smiled as Sonja approached him. “Haven’t lost my touch since youth,” he said, grinning.

“Good for you.” She yawned. “Without magic?”

“Well…maybe I helped the arrow along, just a little.” He made a gesture, indicating a twist in the arrow’s course.

She noticed that he was dressed in a fresh robe, salmon-colored. He had bathed, and his long white hair was brushed back from his forehead; his mustache and beard were trimmed and combed.

“I take it that the bathing house is still standing?”

“Still there. Very relaxing. I found these clothes there.”

“Ummm.” She turned and trudged off in the direction of a good soak. “Save some of that bird for me, wizard.”

“Either that, or I’ll fell another one for you.”

“Any wine?” she asked, walking away.

“Found a barrelful.”

She nodded. “That should get us through this morning.”

The warm waters of the bath refreshed Sonja tremendously. She floated on the surface and let the warmth caress her; then she scrubbed herself and washed her hair, and floated some more. Still feeling a little tired, she lay down on a wide blanket on the sand of the bathing house floor and closed her eyes. But dreams and memories came to her as her mind drifted. She opened her eyes again and sat up.

Because her tunic was filthy, she looked for something else to wear before putting on her mail. She found a man’s short tunic and pulled it on; it fit her well, but the coarse cloth chafed her bums and bruises. She applied oil to her abrasions, and they burned less after that. She only wished she could find a salve for her mind.

Ban-Itos had indeed brought down another bird for Sonja, and it was cooked and ready to eat by the time she returned from the bathing house. She thanked him and began on the bird; she was famished. When she had taken the edge off her hunger, she looked up from the half-eaten ptarmigan in her hands and said to Ban-Itos, “I left a friend in this village when we marched off to take the ziggurat.”

The wizard looked at her, a slight sadness in his old eyes.

“His name was Iatos,” she continued. “I should search for him. There may be a chance—”

“No, Sonja.” Ban-Itos shook his head. “He is not alive. No one lives here. At dawn, I did a conjuring to learn if any survived. Save for us, there are no living humans in the village—no, nor within all the encompassing horizon of this vast steppeland.”

Sonja laid her bird aside and sat for a space in deep thought. No longer would Iatos have to know the pain of being the survivor…

So many had died, so many thousands—and Sonja knew that she, too, would have died in the ziggurat but for the magical aid of Ban-Itos.

“Was it worth it, old wizard?” she asked finally. “All this death?”

He nodded somberly. “Had we not liberated the star, Thotas might have lived long enough to use its power as he intended—to conquer the world. In his madness he would have marched all of mankind into that hell-pit as one monstrous sacrifice, to gain even greater power from the dark gods who created the cosmos. It was the greatest sorcerous plot ever conceived—but neither Thotas nor his predecessors knew the full nature of what they called down from the black voids beyond the heavens. In the end they would have been destroyed, and the world with them. Thotas had to be stopped; and without Bo-ugan’s stubborn determination to go on fighting even after he knew he must lose, Thotas might have succeeded; for Bo-ugan slowed him down, distracted him just enough…

Sonja fell silent again. Of all those soldiers who lay dead after the ten-year madness, she could mourn only Iatos. Never again would she and Iatos have an opportunity to pick up their interrupted conversation. Sonja would receive from Iatos no more words of philosophy or comfort. She would remember him as only she had known him—a strange mixture of sword and book, thought and action, determinist and independent spirit. She was glad for Ban-Itos’s words—glad to know that Iatos, and all the others, had not died for nothing.

After she had finished eating, Sonja and the wizard stretched out on the ground and sipped the wine, but spoke very little. They were not mistrustful of each other, but they were not ready to discuss their recent experiences; the psychic and emotional exhaustion was still too great.

“And you say Thotas’s magic held it trapped? What was the star?’’ Sonja asked Ban-Itos finally.

Ban-Itos scowled introspectively. “There are strange things in this cosmos: giants asleep in the core of the earth, awaiting the proper rituals to free them—dead gods hovering all around us, waiting to be reincarnated and given new powers—spirits as old as time, wandering the earth in human guise, searching for answers—other worlds…The star? I don’t know. It was something beyond our understanding.”

He sipped more wine and seemed to be turning things over in his mind.

“What of the images I saw reflected in the silver shield?” Sonja asked.

“You saw more than most sorcerers see,” said Ban-Itos. “True glimpses of the All…No human being may see more than a glimpse and live.”

“And my—guardian? My fate? What is the blue being that has given me my skill with a sword, that insists on my destiny?”

“It is what it claims to be,” Ban-Itos replied gently.

“It is yourself. To know it you need only know yourself.”

Sonja stared into her cup. “And—Daron?”

Ban-Itos smiled at her sadly, uncertainly. “You knew him better than I, Sonja. You recognized him as himself. The answer to that question, too, resides in yourself.”

She did not answer, but stared for a long while at the brilliantly reflected edge of sunlight that gleamed on a twisted piece of metal across from her. Idly she wondered what it had once been. She stared at it till she no longer saw it, till it was only an unfocused glare in her eyes.

By the middle of the afternoon they were prepared to move on. Each had gathered food, found a horse, clothes and weapons.

“Where will you go, Ban-Itos?” Sonja asked. “What will you do?”

“I’m afraid I have many years left in me, after all,” he replied, “for Daron went in my stead when fate called. I will wander. But eventually I want to return to Odurac’s house.”

“But—why, wizard?”

“There is much there that needs to be corrected, and much strength there that I can return to the Way—much to study and learn. It will be a better home for me than it was for Odurac, for I can put to better use the things he began than would he, had he lived.”

Sonja nodded.

“And you?” Ban-Itos asked her.

She thought a moment. “I will wander, too. But there is yet another thing to be done, and only I remain to do it.”

Ban-Itos studied her face. “Of course,” he said. Then, reaching into his robe, he drew forth an object and handed it to her. “Keep this, Sonja—it may well aid you.”

Sonja realized that it was the small pouch containing the remnant of Odurac’s ashes. Looking cautiously within, she saw that they glowed faintly, causing the blue gem Daron had placed with them to cast an eerie gleam.

“Ban-Itos, I cannot—”

“The ashes of a sorcerer are powerful,” said the old man. “Daron’s soul is in peril, but Odurac was his father…Fare you well, Sonja.”

“And you, Ban-Itos.”

She tied the pouch to her belt, and then they stood before one another, half-happy and half-sad, remembering all that had befallen them in the last weeks, and how much they had come to mean to each other. Ban-Itos held out his arms, and Sonja jumped into them and hugged him. The old man closed his arms around her and held her.

“Fare you well, Ban-Itos,” Sonja whispered to him. “By Mitra, fare you well—and thank you, thank you, for all that you have done!”

“The strength of the gods to you, daughter of destiny. Always, Sonja—” He moved her back, held her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes “—always remember what you have learned. Trust yourself, be yourself, but also let yourself—be surprised.”

“I’ll try, old wizard.”

“And you will succeed,” he said quietly. “You will astonish yourself.”

“I—I want to be wise, Ban-Itos. Wherever the trail leads, I want to be wise.”

“You will be. You are, and you will be.” He hugged her again. “The gods be with you always, Sonja of Hyrkania.”

“And you, Ban-Itos. Wise, good man…” She touched his cheek lightly with her fingers, felt the tears that dampened it. “Perhaps we will meet again, and share wine.”

“Perhaps,” he whispered. “If not in this life, then in another…”

When he rode out, Sonja watched him go with blurred vision, and whispered a prayer after him, and more thanks.

* * *

Two days of travel brought her into the swamp, and another found her riding her reluctant horse to the brink of the stream across from the island of the witch’s hut.

Pausing, Sonja took the pouch from her belt, opened it and looked inside. The ashes of Odurac barely glowed, even in the shadowy gloom beneath the swamp trees. The gem gave forth only a tiny blue glimmer.

“Odurac,” Sonja muttered grimly, “if the fate of Daron’s soul means aught to you, aid me now!” Carefully she urged her mount forward, and slowly she walked the steed across the murky river water between the two great oaks.

Then she saw Osylla. The witch, tall and beautiful as before, this time garbed in a plain white robe, stood at the open door of her hut and waited as Sonja approached. She dismounted, tethered her horse to a sapling, pushed back her hair.

“You. Still alive, eh?” Osylla commented, her green eyes narrowing.

“Most were slain,” Sonja answered brusquely, looking around as though searching for something. “I survived, and one other.”

“You survived,” Osylla said. “And now what do you want here?”

“The sorcerer’s son—Daron. He was slain.”

“That is true.”

“I know you placed a curse upon his soul, Osylla.” Sonja’s voice was strong and level as she stared into the witch’s emerald eyes. “I want to know what sort of curse.”

Osylla raised her eyebrows; she placed her hands on her hips and moved her lithe body in a slight swagger. “So, then—it was truly love between you?”

“Aye. Why so mocking a tone?”

“I am still amazed at the immensities of the human soul, that is all,” said Osylla drily. “A true love, a true love…Maybe the gods are good, after all.”

“What kind of curse?” Sonja repeated in a level tone.

“I own his soul,” Osylla replied. “He now belongs to me, and to this swamp. It is as simple as that.”

“And what must I do to free him?”

Osylla’s face took on an expression of contempt. “Do you jest?”

“Witch, my temper has never been long, and it’s not going to last much longer with you. What must I do to win Daron’s soul free? Buy him from you? I can get the gold. Serve you? I’ll even do that, damn you. Do you wish a hired sword—?”

Osylla’s taunting laughter kindled Sonja’s anger and nearly goaded her into lunging forward in an attempt to kill the witch where she stood. But she did not wish to jeopardize Daron. She knew the perils of sorcery.

“Then this is truly a true love, isn’t it?” Osylla remarked scathingly. “You dare to enter my swamp not once, but twice—and for love! And now you offer your life—your life!—in exchange for a sorcerer’s son’s?” Sonja took a deep breath to calm herself. “What price?” she demanded again. “Daron is trapped in the body of one of your—swamp-things. I want him freed.” Osylla seemed to consider the offer for a brief moment, but then said, “Nothing you can offer me would do me as much good as having Odurac’s son’s soul in my power. He is a potent force, a very old life, a True Spirit—and by virtue of his willingly sacrificing himself to me, there is great strength in him.”

“Then, look you!” Sonja yelled. She pulled free her sword, holding it up for Osylla to see. Cautiously, the witch lifted her arms to protect herself magically; but then, seeing that Sonja did not mean to strike at her, she relaxed.

“This sword,” Sonja told her, voice tense with emotion, “was my father’s. My father’s sword, witch! He forged it himself and used it in combat. When he was slain, I took it. Now it possesses my strength as well as his! It has slain sorcerers and demons; it has drunk deeply of the blood of hundreds of maddened warriors—so deeply that in and of itself it has become a potent magical weapon!”

“All of that is probably true,” Osylla admitted, frowning slightly.

“I—I will give it to you,” Sonja told her. “Or it, and myself, in service. Only—free Daron of your curse.”

Osylla’s eyes half-lidded themselves. Was she seriously considering Sonja’s plan? Sonja stepped closer, her quivering left hand clenched at her side, her right holding out the sword. “I am this blade,” she said urgently, “and this blade is me.” Her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. “This blade is more than a steel weapon. Feel it!”

Sonja held the blade out for Osylla to touch. The witch warily backed away a step, and made a rapid, intricate sign, and a faint yellow glow sprang into being around her. “Think not to deceive me,” she said. “I am protected by a sorcerous shield which no steel can penetrate.”

“My weapon is yours. It can add greatly to the strength of your sorcery. Feel its power!”

The witch was studying the blade; she reached out to touch it, allowed two fingers to rest upon its edge. “Indeed, there is a great strength in it. I might be—”

She looked up—

Looked up, into Sonja’s suddenly fierce sapphire eyes blazing with the intensity of hate…

Sonja’s left hand darted forward, fingers unclenching as she hurled the ashes of Odurac straight into Osylla’s face. Instantly those ashes became a myriad of sparks burning into the witch’s cheeks, lips and green eyes. Osylla gasped; the yellow glow about her flickered out.

Then Sonja’s blade moved, still with the witch’s fingers upon it. All of Sonja’s furious strength went into that stroke. The witch, in her shield of power, might have withstood the strokes of a hundred blades, but the ashes had stolen all her sorcery. The sword’s razorlike edge sheared off the tips of her fingers, caught her in mid-throat and plunged clear through her neck. Not even the bone could resist Sonja’s angry thrust. Blood spurted as the witch’s head toppled from her neck; her arms went limp and her legs buckled. Then her head, trailing the long golden tresses already wet with blood, struck the damp earth of her island, while the severed neck gushed scarlet.

Sonja jumped back and stood still, watchful, as Osylla’s corpse collapsed.

For now the body’s change had begun: a transformation into a terribly aged woman. Fantastically, a rapid dissolution occurred, the long white arms becoming first hairy, then scaly; the green-eyed head becoming something reptilian, then something unearthly and monstrous. Just as quickly, those features blurred and Osylla—whatever she was—had receded in death from all the lives she had ever lived. Her flesh and bones became dust, rotted, gray and brown.

A breeze began to blow, and that dust—only a moment before so potent with evil strength—was whirled into the air as effortlessly as might be the dust of any long-dead man or woman or animal on the surface of the earth.

Sonja’s horse snorted and sidled away; but the Hyrkanian, shuddering with the tremendous tension of her well-played game and the relief of having succeeded, stared at the whirls of dust until they were blown free by the breeze. She felt a brief warmth at her side—a glow from the pouch that had contained the ashes of Odurac. Looking within, she saw the blue gem gleaming brightly for a moment, then fading. Its light gradually diminished, and had soon vanished entirely.

“Thank you,” Sonja muttered. “Thank you…Odurac.”

Sonja mounted her horse and began to make her way out of the swamp. The place already seemed less dismal. Even the air seemed purer.

As she rode she saw corpses strewn upon the thick sedges of the march or bobbing on the surfaces of stagnant, scummy pools—bodies that sprawled at last in true death.

Mitra! How long had the witch controlled this swamp?

The corpses, every one of them, were human. Male and female, some of them children, but every one of them human. No monsters, only men and women and children, free at last of the horror that had made their flesh shackles for their souls. How long had these trapped souls suffered and obeyed and waited, past the hope of waiting, for Sonja or someone like Sonja to free them?

Sunlight broke through, full and bright and beautiful, illuminating the swamp. A breeze blew up, and it was not sickening or stagnant; it was fresh, clean, good air carried along on a gust, and it carried strength with it.

Sonja brought her horse to a stop and sat atop it, gazing at a piece of swampland. Sunlight came through the tangle of branches above, lighting it. There was the rock Daron had sat upon. There was the tree where he had defended himself, and helped defend her.

Sonja dismounted.

“Daron?”

She looked up, startled by some feeling, some sense of a presence…She shook her head. An unfamiliar peacefulness lay upon her.

Time enough for the road. Time enough for Sonja the free sword, Sonja the renegade mercenary, and for the sunlight, and the breeze. And for memories of Daron.

She looked around, remembering, and seemed to hear his laughter. Or did she? Sonja smiled, and threw back her head, staring up at the sunlit treetops. Then, slowly, she returned to her horse, and mounted, and rode away, toward her destiny.